In the Winnower's Garden
by Lauhau
Summary: Borrowing heavily from Irish and Welsh mythology, this fairy tale explores one possibility behind the creation of the Labyrinth and the future of the girl who solved it. J/S.
1. Chapter 1

AN: For those who read my first story, this one actually follows the events of the movie. In fact, there's a break in the narration during which you could just sit down and watch it, at least until the scene in the Escher room. Once you start reading, I'm guessing you'll probably say "Hey, I thought this was a Labyrinth story! Where's our favorite Goblin King, or Sarah, or anyone who looks remotely familiar?" No worries, they're on the way. This story borrows heavily from Irish and Welsh mythology, with significant tweaking of legendary figures to get them to fit into the narrative, and I hope no one is offended by the liberties I've taken with a culture that is not mine but which I think is really cool. This story was written just for fun, not for profit. On with the show.  
  
* * * * *  
  
IN THE WINNOWER'S GARDEN  
  
The sun was just beginning to dip down into the west as a lone traveler set his foot onto Lugh's road. His shadow stretched out before him like a giant's footprint on the rough path, its long lines a parody of the bent body that cast it. Strewn with boulders and steadily uphill as it was, this was the easiest going of all his long journey, and if he seemed bowed down as with a great weariness or heavy burden, at least he went swiftly. His bronze-bound boots rang on the stony ground and echoed from the dry mountain. Harvest season was nearly past and there had been no rain for a month, and what brittle leaves were left did nothing to dull the sound of his progress. Just as well - it was unwise to come upon Lugh unannounced.  
  
The air cooled quickly in the mountains, and the traveler found himself shivering in the breeze that sprang up at dusk. He pulled his leather jerkin tighter about his body and bent his mind to the road, forcing his tired legs onward. "Just a little further," he promised himself, making the same promise again fifty paces later, and then again, until it became his only thought, burning in his brain like a smoldering coal. Even the longest journey, however, is a sum of single steps, and he had now come very near the end. So intent was he on putting one foot in front of the other that he failed to notice the looming bulk of a tower in front of him, three times the height of a man and by this time hardly more than a darker, more solid piece of the night. In fact, he was only saved from going head- first into the door by a bell that hung above the lintel, which rang out far louder than the evening wind warranted and brought him stumbling to a halt.  
  
He stared slack-jawed at the high wooden door of Lugh's hall, not quite believing that he had actually arrived, and the strength that had carried him all this way suddenly gave out. He fell against the door as his knees folded beneath him, striking his head on its smooth grain. His ears filled with a roaring noise and the world began to spin. A children's rhyme, old as the hills, came into his mind: "Lucky rowan picked at dawn, Merrow with his red cap on; copper penny down a well, found at last by Lugan's bell." Images of leaping, leering Merrows surrounded him, red caps blazing, and as he raised his hands against them, the door behind him opened.  
  
The figure of a tall man stood silhouetted in yellow light, one hand on the doorjamb and the other hidden in his robes. The traveler pitched forward over the threshold and the tall man sprang with the speed of a hawk to catch him as he fell. A voice called for wine, servants scattered in a flurry of activity, and in the blink of an eye the wayfarer found himself in a chair by a roaring fire, a fur on his lap and food and drink at his right hand.  
  
At a gesture from the lord of the hall, he fell upon the meat with a ravenous appetite, for it had been nearly three days since his supplies had given out. As he ate, his host sat down in the chair opposite, waiting until his guest was sated before asking his business, and the two men watched each other warily. The traveler had never before met one of the people of Annwn and Lugh was the tallest man he had ever seen, as broad- shouldered as an ox, and the sense of physical power draped him like fine robes. As Lugh turned to the fire, the strong lines of his face were thrown into sharp relief and his hair shone the burning red of molten metal - just as his son's had. There was no use delaying the inevitable. The traveler swallowed, put his hand to his breast, and gave the half-bow appropriate for a lord who was not his liege.  
  
"Don Righ," he began, using the title in Lugh's own language (his host smiled a little at the words), "you can only be Lugh of Wechnow, he of the Tuatha de Annwn. Your hospitality surpasses all thanks, and it is a poor guest who rewards his host with ill news. I am called Fothaid, fortunate enough to have been much beloved by your son, who was my captain and dearest friend. I see by the darkening of your face that you suspect what I have to say. My lord, your son fell in battle. Cuchullain is slain! As the breath left his body, he bade me come to you with all speed and tell you of his fate." Fothaid turned his gaze to the hearth, tears coursing unheeded down his cheeks.  
  
Lugh gripped the chair so hard that its dark wood groaned beneath his fingers. "How can this be?" he demanded of his suddenly unwelcome guest. "There is no warrior living who could overcome my son in battle!"  
  
"You speak the truth," Fothaid said, lowering his voice and motioning with his hand that Lugh should come nearer. "The Firbolg had broken treaty and marched from Connaught, intending to invade Kellarach - "  
  
"Yes, yes," Lugh interrupted impatiently. "All this is known to me. My son leads the defense against the barbarian invaders."  
  
"My lord," Fothaid continued, almost in a whisper, "more than just Firbolg came out of Connaught. I realize now that we saw her three times - once as a carrion crow that flew high above us as we marched to the ford, once as a washer woman at the shore, once as a crone standing on a high green barrow. She cursed our swords so that all battles went against us and cursed our boots so that we lost our way. At the last, she settled about Cuchullain's head as he fought the Firbolg captain, distracting him at the vital moment, and his enemy's sword found its sheath in his breast. As he died, he commanded me to tell you this, for only one of Annwn has such power. The Firbolg name your kind necromancers and swear to drive you from this earth, but they have found themselves an ally in your midst. Hunt down this renegade witch and slay her! Avenge your son's death, Lugh of Annwn!" Fothaid's eyes burned in their sockets as he uttered the last, his hot hand pressed against Lugh's own.  
  
Fothaid's speech fell like a millstone in Lugh's breast, weighting his heart as it bent his back. "You must tell me the full tale, neglecting not a single detail," Lugh said in a grim, hollow voice. Fothaid dipped his head in assent, and in pity Lugh reached out and laid his hand on the other man's shoulder. "Tomorrow will be soon enough," he said gently. "You have the beginnings of a fever and have come a long way bearing a heavy load. Now you must rest." Lugh beckoned to his steward and the weary man was led from the hall, mumbling his thanks.  
  
A few minutes later, the steward reappeared and told him that Fothaid was sleeping. "Good," Lugh said. "Have medicines ready when he awakens. He has the look of a man one short step ahead of his death. Now bid the servants to their own beds. I wish to be alone." The steward bowed and motioned to the lads standing at the door, and the hall was swiftly emptied.  
  
Lugh sat in his chair and listened as the sounds of activity throughout the house slowly subsided. At last there was nothing left to be heard but the popping of the fire in its hearth. He watched its glowing heart as his mind filled with memories of Cuchullain, who went to war singing and now lay silent beneath the hills. As one of his people's mightiest warriors, Lugh had himself led and lost his own sons in battle, and a lord of Annwn was not supposed to shed tears for mortal deaths, not even those of his own children. So, dry-eyed, he brooded before the fire as his right hand slowly curled into a fist. Of all his issue, only Cuchullain, his youngest son, had had hair like red flame burning in the dark. In him Lugh's Annwn blood had flowed thickest, vying against his mother's mortal taint and making him the greatest hero this land had ever seen. Lugh felt a sharp stab of regret that he had ever fostered the boy to King Conor, thus tying his fealty to Emania and its constant wars, but it had been Cuchullain's deepest wish to serve in Conor's court and march with the Knights of the Red Branch. His deeds would surely be sung for generations to come, although that was scant comfort to his father.  
  
As his thoughts turned to the creature who had betrayed his son, the knot of bitterness in Lugh's breast began to harden into anger. Standing abruptly, he strode to the hall's entrance and flung the door wide. Golden light flowed into the darkness until the fire in the hearth extinguished itself at his harsh command. Lugh welcomed the wind's portent of the coming winter, using its chill to bring his mind to focus as he looked up at the stars and thought about what should be done.  
  
Cuchullain had not been able to put a name to the one who had orchestrated his death, but Lugh knew her very well indeed. He had fought under her banner, more lifetimes of men ago than he cared to count, and had rebelled against her when the Tuatha de Annwn rose to cast off her tyranny. She was old, perhaps as ancient as the world itself, and Lugh clenched his fists as rage swept through him. She aided the Firbolg against her own people, and she had killed his son! Raising his arms to the sky, Lugh called out her name. "Macha," he cried. The air around him stilled. "Badb," he shouted, louder. The rustling of the night creatures ceased as they pricked their ears in terror. "Morrigan!" he bellowed, and the earth shuddered. "You have robbed me of my son, and so I swear this - that I will never rest until I destroy you! I swear it on the Old Powers and on my blood!"  
  
At this, he drew out the knife from his belt and pricked his palm, squeezing three drops onto the dry ground. His blood looked black in the starlight. Where each drop fell, there came a hissing noise and Lugh stepped back in alarm as three branches reared out of the earth like thorny snakes. They twined about each other in an intricate knot, rattling like dried bones before settling into stillness.  
  
Lugh stayed where he was until the normal sounds of the night resumed. Moving very carefully, he reached out a finger and touched the little triple-stemmed thorn bush and found it icy cold. It seemed that the Old Powers had been paying attention when he made his oath. Lugh forced himself to brush it aside - after all, he had every intention of carrying through on his promise - but he could not shake off a feeling of uneasiness as he came back into his hall. For the first time since Cuchullain had gone to King Conor's court, Lugh barred the door behind him.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Nearly a week passed before Fothaid was fit to ride. The household bustled with activity, for Lugh could not say how long this errand of theirs might take and the company must be outfitted against all eventualities. Fothaid had instantly pledged his support to the venture and was more irritated by his slow convalescence than anyone else. If the servants noticed the thorny addition to the doorstep, they were too wise to mention it. Lugh gathered his fifty liegemen and they, along with Lugh's best hunting hounds, rode southwest toward the Dala Road.  
  
They were hard in the saddle for three days before they turned aside at the town of Belsreach and headed for Belinslaw Keep, where they were welcomed with open arms by Lord Belenus and his lady Belisama. "Bless my eyes!" roared the master of the keep, clapping each and every man on the back as the party dismounted in his courtyard. "I've been heckling young Lugh for a visit, and when he comes at last he brings a small army! Welcome, welcome each man! We've food and fire and means to meet your every need." Heartened by this reception after a hard road, the men grinned at each other and trooped cheerfully inside.  
  
As Lugh and Fothaid passed over his threshold, Belenus clasped his kinsman's hand and said, "That's a heavy shadow laid on your back, Lugh. It has the look of the Old Powers. They're partial to thorns."  
  
"I laid it on myself, Belenus," Lugh said ruefully. Being of Annwn, he had little need of sleep, but after more than a week of wakeful nights Lugh was starting to think the Powers had taken him too literally. "The Morrigan has taken my son from me, and I judge it high time her blight is removed from this earth once and for all."  
  
Belenus laid a hand on Lugh's shoulder. "I'm sorry, cousin," he said gently. "We heard of the Firbolg victory at Kellarach and knew it must have come at great cost." He ushered them to a small table set in front of the hearth and his wife brought them bread and cheese, her golden hair shining as brightly as the sun as she bend to kiss Lugh's forehead before leaving to see to the lodgings for his men. The lord of the keep poured the wine himself, then leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh, twisting his goblet this way and that between his thick fingers.  
  
"It's clear why you've come to me," Belenus said musingly. "I always recognized the Morrigan for what she is, even at the height of her power in Tara's golden age. Black-hearted witch! Carrion-crow! Why, I've longed for an excuse to hunt her down ever since she fled Annwn. Don't get so excited, lad," he cautioned at Lugh's fierce grin. "Not long ago I'd have ridden out with you in a heartbeat, but our new High King doesn't turn half the blind eye his mother did. The Ard Righ doesn't want his people fighting, says there are too few of us as it is. And it's a serious thing to go after the Morrigan - she built Scailtara, after all, and was the first to unite Annwn under one throne. She's the oldest of us all after the Dagda, and would you care to go up against him? No, for no sane creature would!"  
  
"But she rides now with the Firbolg against her own people," Lugh argued. "She makes fair-seeming assurances to mortal kings, urging them to make war on each other and then reveling in the bloodshed of their armies. The Firbolg have sworn to drive us from the earth, and if the Morrigan gives them aid, who can say what they might do?"  
  
Back and forth, back and forth Belenus spun his goblet. "I need little convincing," he said slowly, "but the High King is another matter."  
  
"He needn't hear of it until the deed is done," Lugh persuaded.  
  
"Yes, well," Belenus shifted uncomfortably. "That's an issue, because by sheer luck I have another guest in my home tonight."  
  
Lugh frowned. "Surely not the High King himself. . ?"  
  
"No, no," Belenus waved the suggestion aside. "Ard Righ is safe and snug at Scailtara. But," he added with a grimace, "it's almost as bad. Arawn and Hafgan have declared war on each other again, curse their eyes! It seems they mean to finally settle it this time, and Ard Righ wants no killing. He's sent his man to feel out where all the Folk stand, and those that are neutral are being shepherded back to the capital to put diplomatic pressure on those two numbskulls. Most here don't care one way or the other what happens in Annwn or we'd still be there, so we're being summoned back to Scailtara by the handful." He lowered his voice, glancing toward the guest quarters as he said, "Powyll is here now, and my wife and I are to cross the border in three days' time."  
  
Lugh swore and pounded his fist on the table, but Fothaid held up a hand to stay his anger. "Your High King will be much occupied with the conflict in his own country," he said slowly, "and it seems unlikely he will spare any thought for two of his folk who slipped away at the last moment. Besides, opinions change. Who can say that one who initially had no preference for one side over the other may not suddenly develop a bias?"  
  
Belenus stared at him for a moment, then let out a great guffaw and slapped himself heartily on the knee. "By thunder, I like this fellow! Come to think of it, I always did consider Hafgan to be an impudent rascal with a bee in his bonnet and no good claim to Arawn's throne. Damned if I'm not partial after all! But we must be cautious," he continued in a sobered voice. "Powyll is liable to be suspicious, especially if he gets a look at that thorn bush you're carrying around, Lugh. By firelight it should be easy enough to hide, but as for tomorrow. . . "  
  
"Never fear," Lugh said grimly. "I have business in your smithy at first light."  
  
When they met the Ard Righ's envoy that evening, Powyll struck Fothaid as an honest, open man, very agreeable, and he began to feel wrong about their planned deception almost immediately. Lugh noticed it and muttered, "Do not pity the Ard Righ's agent. His honest face is the reason he was sent!" Powyll spent much of the evening feeling out Lugh's stance on the war between Arawn and Hafgan, and Lugh did not have to pretend his preference for Arawn. They were old friends and had often hunted together in the forests of Maelbodh, Arawn's kingdom. Disappointed, Powyll did not command Lugh to return to the capital, and Lugh was very careful to keep his back to the shadows.  
  
As promised, Lugh disappeared into Belenus' huge smithy as soon as the first rays of dawn broke over the blue heathered hills, and there he remained for much of the their sojourn at Belinslaw Keep. When Fothaid inquired of Belenus what Lugh might be doing, the big man chuckled and replied, "Lugh has it in him to be the finest smith that ever lived. I'll wager he's forging himself a weapon to strike down the Morrigan, for she's too clever for mortal blades. He'll be wanting my help at the end to lay some mighty magic into it." When Lugh came searching for Belenus on the eve of their departure, Fothaid noted the deep circles under his eyes with uneasiness. He could not shake the feeling that his errand to Lugh's hall had unleashed something much darker than Cuchullain had expected.  
  
Their plan for getting Belenus away from Powyll seemed almost too simple, but it worked like a charm. The lord of Belinslaw Keep sent three hundred of his men to bivouac just outside of Belsreach, then 'accidentally' left his sword in Lugh's keeping. Belenus accompanied Powyll and his lady wife to within a few miles of the border between Annwn and the mortal world before suddenly discovering his loss. Making quite a show of how foolish he felt, he spun his horse about and, with a shouted promise to return straight away, made directly for Belsreach. Lugh and Fothaid were waiting for him there, mounted and ready. As he caught sight of the newly-forged broadsword lashed to Lugh's saddle, Belenus grunted his approval and reached out his arm to reclaim his own weapon.  
  
"Any trouble?" Fothaid asked.  
  
"None at all!" Belenus replied cheerfully. "I'm a Don Righ in my own right and well able to cross the border. If Powyll had pursued me it would have been a grave insult! He won't guess that I'm not coming back for a day at least. Besides, Powyll would never believe that I left my lovely Belisama to pass into Annwn on her own."  
  
Lugh gave a wry smile and said, "That begs the question of how exactly you explained this jaunt to your noble wife. It was never my intent to bring strife into your household!"  
  
"Ha!" Belenus roared with laughter, gathering his reins and putting spur to his horse. "She practically shoved me out the door! Says I've been growing testy of late with inactivity. I gave her a kiss and a promise to return as soon as I may, and she's more than happy to be off to Scailtara to gossip with her lady friends about the failings of husbands." Three hundred fifty strong, the troop rode north to Kellarach, and as they had Belenus and his stories to entertain them, it was merry going.  
  
Their greater numbers meant a slower pace. Although Lugh coaxed every possible mile out of them before letting them settle in for the night, Fothaid was glad of each moment that delayed their confrontation with the Morrigan. At first, he worried that his strange reluctance meant that his courage had been destroyed in that final battle along with his captain. The farther they went, however, the more Fothaid became convinced that his unease lay with their mission itself. He voiced some of his doubts to Belenus in secret, but the lord's clever blue eye merely winked confidently at him, and he knew better than to bring it up with Lugh.  
  
The Firbolg had pressed south into Emania, and the company had to pass several miles out of the way to avoid the armies of both sides. "When we've finished our business with the carrion-crow, we'll come back this way and give Conor some help," Belenus said jovially. They approached the battlefield at Kellarach from the east, under cover of night. Wordlessly, Fothaid showed them the place where Cuchullain had fallen. Lugh unleashed his hounds and the hunt began in earnest.  
  
Over hill, through dale, in fog and in rain, they followed the Morrigan's trail north and west. Fothaid saw that the dogs rarely put their noses to earth - in fact, they kept their heads high, muzzles in the wind, and seemed as confident of the trail in water as on land - and he had to restrain himself from making the sign against evil. Lugh used every art at his disposal to hasten their pursuit, both as a lord of Annwn and as a skilled tracker, and the trail grew steadily fresher. At last there came a day when, as the sun set into the western sea, Lugh announced that the hunt would end on the morrow.  
  
As the evening star hung low in the gray twilight, there came a sudden click of hoof against stone and the rattle of rocks sliding down a slope. They were in barren country now and echoes were liable to carry a long way after dark. Lugh quickly gestured for silence, commanding the sentries to him with a curt flick of his wrist. Weapons drawn, they melted into the shadows flanking the approach to the camp and waited. Whoever was stalking them had been cautioned by his own noise, for they heard nothing for nearly a quarter of an hour. At length, however, the shape of a man could be seen through the gloaming, leading his horse carefully up the gulch. They waited until he was well into their midst, then moved all at once to surround him, holding the naked points of their blades to his throat.  
  
The horse startled and bucked, but the man held up his hands quite calmly. Fothaid's eyes widened in astonishment and the tip of his sword dropped several inches as he saw who it was. "Gods' teeth," Belenus growled. "Powyll, what the devil are you doing here?"  
  
"I might ask you the same question," Powyll responded, folding his hands serenely in front of him.  
  
"Look you, Powyll," Lugh spat, "what we do here is no concern of yours. Belisama can speak for her husband in Scailtara, so just turn right around and go lodge a complaint with Ard Righ, all right?"  
  
"No," Powyll said, softly but with the force of a solid blow. "You may have business here, but when Lugh Heavy-hand and Belenus Light-bringer bear an enchanted blade and hunt with the hounds of Annwn, then it is also the Ard Righ's business. Now tell me what quarry you pursue." Lugh remained silent, he and Powyll looking each other steadily in the eye until Lugh snorted and spun on his heel, stalking angrily back to his blankets.  
  
As Fothaid led Powyll's horse to the picket line, he saw Belenus put a reassuring hand on his cousin's shoulder as he passed to his own bed. Fothaid's spirits sank into his boots, but loyalty to his comrades kept him silent. He spent a restless night, and when he rose with the dawn he was not in the least surprised to find that Lugh and Belenus were gone and that they had taken the hounds with them.  
  
He watched the company stir and wake and stumble off to take care of necessities, rummaging in saddlebags for a bit of breakfast. The sun was halfway above the horizon by the time he made his decision. Walking purposefully to where Powyll (who was unused to sleeping on the ground) was trying to rub out a particularly sore spot, Fothaid said without preamble, "They have gone to hunt the Morrigan."  
  
The High King's man froze, then carefully straightened and looked him in the eye. "The Morrigan. They mean to kill her with that bewitched blade," Powyll said.  
  
"Yes," Fothaid confirmed. "Because she caused the death of Cuchullain, who was Lugh's son."  
  
Powyll ran for his horse. "Mount up!" he shouted. "We must find them!" He did not even wait for a saddle, simply leapt astride and took off pell- mell up the ravine, leaving Fothaid little choice but to follow. He was to remember that ride for the rest of his life. Powyll rode like a madman, racing ahead with no thought for the bad terrain, and Fothaid was amazed that neither of them ended up with a broken neck. They rode for hour after hour and the hills seemed to blur and run together like wet clay as they pounded onward into a hot, stinking wind. The smell of decay grew so strong it made them gag as they went ever further into the hills.  
  
"I had no idea the ravine went this far back!" Fothaid yelled to his companion through a momentary lull in the wind.  
  
"It doesn't," Powyll replied. "We're in the Barren."  
  
Fothaid's horse was beginning to founder when at last they heard the baying of hounds ahead of them. The ground leveled off into a round bowl, ringed all around with smooth cliffs. There was not so much as a hairline crack in those walls - nothing could hope to escape from that gray prison, and the dogs knew they had their prey trapped. They circled around a black mound that looked like a crumpled pile of mourning shrouds, baring their teeth and howling in triumph. Powyll spurred his horse toward the hunt and Fothaid followed as best he could on his laboring mount. As he watched, though, he could see that Powyll could not possibly reach them in time. Belenus towered above the small black mass, blazing with power, and Lugh raised his sword to strike the final blow. As if in a dream, Fothaid saw Powyll's horse, stretched in a dead run against the preternatural stillness of the stone circle, and the light reflecting from Lugh's blade as he plunged it into the center of the black heap.  
  
Soundless, the pile of black rags collapsed on itself. Powyll let out a despairing cry, and as Lugh and Belenus turned in surprise he raised his fist and shouted a long word. Thunder rolled in the cloudless sky and man and horse vanished, gone from the world as if they had never been. Startled, Fothaid dismounted and began to make his way toward the others when he heard a sound that chilled him to the bone.  
  
A low chuckle echoed through the bowl, menacing and cruel. It began almost as a whisper, but in no time at all it gathered itself to a shout. Without warning, a tornado suddenly touched down in the center of the circle and the wind knocked Fothaid off his feet. His horse screamed and bolted and he could hear the dogs crying in terror. A black cloud was seeping from the ruined mess of rags at Lugh's feet, swirling and gathering itself into a tower of darkness that pierced the sky. They watched, horrified, as the cloud coalesced into the shape of a gigantic three-headed crow. She cackled and reached down to peck at the puny beings at her feet, and Lugh and Belenus ran. They grabbed Fothaid where he lay stunned, and although the monster had only the substance of mist, her dark shadow set a deathly chill into them.  
  
At the mouth of the bowl, Belenus raised a hand and called the word that opened the way to the world of mortal men and they tumbled out into the sunshine. As suddenly as the wind had risen, it passed and left cold air in its wake. The hounds crept around them on their bellies, whimpering piteously, and Fothaid's horse stood nearby, its flanks heaving. The other two mounts were nowhere to be seen. The sword in Lugh's hand had turned black and pitted and he dropped it with a curse. Belenus lifted it gingerly and wrapped it in his cloak. The weapon was far too powerful to leave it lying on a hillside for any wandering chief to find, but Fothaid could not have brought himself to touch it. The three men sat together, heads bowed, and did not speak for a long time.  
  
At last, Lugh tipped his head to look up at the sky. "We must return to Annwn and tell the Ard Righ all that has happened," he said in a low voice. "There may be a way to avert this evil we have unleashed."  
  
For once, Belenus had nothing to say. Upon investigation, they found that they were less than a mile from the company they had so recently left. The men were waiting anxiously, for both horses had returned riderless, but the rousing cheer of welcome died as the soldiers saw their grim faces. They wasted no time, and leaving the cursed sword in Fothaid's care, Lugh and Belenus set off for the road that passed into Annwn.  
  
* * * * *  
  
The Palace at Scailtara has been described by the poets as a rare jewel, an exotic flower set above a green city in which the dazzling court displays itself like facets in a gem. As the Ard Righ stormed through his alabaster halls, a much less appealing metaphor was foremost in his mind. "Fish in a bloody barrel," he growled as he opened the high doors with a wave of his hand. The press of people in the Great Hall turned to him and released a collective sigh, genuflections rippling through the crowd like wind through wheat. Hell's teeth, there was barely enough room for him to squeeze through to his throne! If there is war, he thought grimly, at least there will be fewer of them! It was absolutely unbelievable - surely there were no more than a few hundred of the Folk gathered in his capital, but they each insisted on bringing a positive horde of retainers, courtiers, cooks, baggage boys, shoe shiners, chicken pluckers, and a host of others who did nothing but stand around and gawk. His city was filled to overflowing with fey denizens from kingdoms he had scarcely heard of, and every day he encountered some new creature he was sure he had never seen listed in the Annals of Fairy Races. The trouble was, of course, that courtiers were liable to turn everything into a party. It was just as well that the main force of his diplomatic envoy was camped in the Fertith Fields outside the city walls since he could barely breath as it was. Just a few more hours, he promised himself. Today's business consisted almost entirely of moving the rest of the court to the Fields in preparation for tomorrow's march to Maelbodh to stop that idiot Hafgan from putting a large hole in King Arawn. With only a few thousand true-blooded Folk left, Annwn simply could not afford a war.  
  
Bleyvys greeted him as he approached his throne, looking as haggard as the High King had ever seen him. "Jareth Ard Righ," the willowy Dryad said hoarsely, "Lord Halban has brought a delegation of Ganconagh who insist they cannot march with Skin-changers, and it seems a band of Pooka got into the paddocks. People are being thrown right and left and half the delegation say they won't sit a horse unless it's been proved to be just a horse - "  
  
"Business as usual, Bleyvys," Jareth said, clapping his seneschal on his mossy shoulder. "Let's see if we can get this mess sorted out, hm?" The High King sighed and cast a jaded eye over the glittering court, sweltering in its own numbers. "This seemed like such a good idea at the time. Look at this place - stuffed to the gills, and Powyll hasn't even returned with the last of the expatriates."  
  
They set to work, and by late afternoon it looked like things might sort themselves out after all. Scailtara was nearly emptied, even its lowliest citizens making a holiday of the event and taking any excuse to spend the day out on the green fields. As the courtiers dribbled out of the city to take up residence in their elaborate pavilions, Jareth inhaled his first unrestricted breath in many days and heaved a sigh of relief. Relaxing in the afternoon rays of the westerly sun, Jareth and Bleyvys were poring over supply lists in the west library when suddenly the king felt an icy hand close around his heart. Dark mist descended in front of his eyes and he saw an old hag, chained and fettered in a silent circle of stone. A golden sword flashed in the gloom, cutting her bonds like a hot knife through butter, and with a terrible scream of glee she cast off her shackles and hurtled into the sky.  
  
Jareth came back to himself abruptly to find that he was on his feet in his own library, shouting incoherently as a very alarmed Bleyvys gripped his arm in one hand and rang for the servants with the other. Blinking in bewilderment, Jareth struggled against his seneschal's hand as he fought to make sense of the vision. No sooner had his eyesight cleared than his heart skipped a beat as Powyll invoked the magic that the Ard Righ had given him to spirit himself directly back to Scailtara, eschewing the long and fickle road to Annwn. Jareth knew that Powyll would only use that spell if he were in dire need, and he dragged Bleyvys toward the throne room, yelling, "Something's happened, or just about to - sound the alarm!" Just then, he felt the substance of Annwn tremble around him as something crossed into it from the Barren. He flung the door to the Great Hall wide, crying, "Powyll! What the devil is it? It's huge and it's headed for Scailtara!"  
  
"My King," Powyll gasped, practically tumbling from his horse's back. "It is the Morrigan. She tricked that fool Lugh into destroying the body that your mother used to bind her in the mortal world, and she comes now to take possession of what was once hers."  
  
What Jareth lacked in patience, he more than made up for in decisiveness. "Brace yourselves," he snapped. Powyll had just enough time to look startled before Jareth summoned his magic and sent every creature in the palace, other than himself, to the green fields outside his city. Scailtara itself was simply too big for him to empty it with sorcery, but hopefully the few citizens left inside its walls would flee when they saw the Carrion-crow coming. The King knew he had very little time. If the Morrigan thought she could take his city without a fight, she was in for a shock, but beneath his arrogance Jareth actually had a fairly reasonable idea about the world and the Powers that moved in it. He knew he was good, and he knew the Morrigan was certainly much, much better. It had taken ten thousand years of building strength in secret before his mother led the revolt against the Phantom Queen's grim rule, and more than half of the Tuatha de Annwn had died in that insurrection. One thing was perfectly clear - he could not allow it to happen again. Jaw set and eyes flashing, Jareth began to weave his magic.  
  
The Morrigan struck like a thunderbolt. Hurricane winds howled around the palace as her shadow blotted out the sun, pouring in through the windows and staining the walls black. He felt her presence congeal into a tottering old woman who suddenly appeared at the threshold of the Great Hall, looking deceptively small. Her head bobbed and swiveled as she searched the hall with rheumy eyes. "Abnoba," she cackled softly. "Abnoba dear, I know you're here. Come out, my darling, and greet your old friend." She peered this way and that, reaching out with her magic as well as her senses for her former adversary.  
  
Jareth felt the seeds of panic stir in his breast. If she found his spells before they were complete, she would destroy them with a breath. He needed to distract her. "Ah, Morrigan," he said as calmly as he could, keeping behind the throne so that she couldn't see his hands. "It's an honor to meet you. I regret that Abnoba will be unable to join us. You see, I am now Ard Righ of Annwn."  
  
"What?" hissed the crone. "Who are you? A young one, by the sound of your voice."  
  
Sweat stood out on his brow as he answered, "I was not yet born when you were so cruelly exiled from Annwn."  
  
She laughed mockingly. "Don't pretend you're on my side, boy. I can feel your animosity. But no fear, hm? Come out here and let me get a look at you, brave sir."  
  
"Well," Jareth temporized wildly, "I would, but an unfortunate accident as a child makes it painful for me to walk. I'm sure you understand."  
  
"Oh yes," hissed the Morrigan, "I certainly do. Tell me, boy, where is Abnoba?"  
  
Jareth rolled his eyes in relief. This was a safe topic. "She loved nothing better than to ride in the Wild Hunt," he began, determined to spin out the story. "One day nearly a century ago, she received word that the fabled White Stag had been seen in Lugirroch, and so she gathered her - "  
  
"So Abnoba died in the Wild Hunt," the Morrigan interrupted thoughtfully.  
  
"Er, yes," Jareth said, nonplussed.  
  
"And you are her son," she continued, menace building in her voice. He opened his mouth to issue a false denial but she forestalled him. "Abnoba is beyond my reach, so I choose to revenge myself on her issue!" Springing forward, she ripped the throne from its dais with one crooked claw and advanced on the king, but Jareth was ready for her. As she reached for his throat, he released his magic.  
  
The Morrigan was pulled and pinched every which way, feeling herself growing larger and larger but also spreading thinner as she sank into the earth, screaming in anger. Outside the walls of Scailtara, Powyll and Bleyvys blanched as a ripple of magic spread out from the palace to engulf the city. There was a blinding flash and the entire court gasped and shielded its eyes, and when they could look again they gazed out over an empty plain. Even the low hill on which the palace had stood was gone, leaving dry dirt in its wake. Within the palace, Jareth fell to his knees in exhaustion. Annwn was safe, at least for the moment. He had locked Scailtara away in its own time and place, irrevocably sealed inside a magic barrier for a thousand and one years - he and the Morrigan, in exile together. He bared his teeth in satisfaction as he felt the rage emanating from the stones beneath his feet. Just as his mother before him, Jareth had bound her in a physical form - he had trapped her within the very stones of the city. She wanted to possess Scailtara and possess it now she certainly did, powerless to leave until the spell gave out at the end of its allotted time. As he ransacked the library in search of a spell that might lead to her ultimate overthrow, Jareth only hoped that Powyll and Bleyvys could puzzle out what he had done.  
  
As it turned out, it was easy for them to realize what had become of the Ard Righ and his capital city, but not for a reason that Jareth had anticipated. Scailtara is the city at the heart of Tara, which is the kingdom at the heart of Annwn. Therefore, the city is a reflection of the entire land, and now the city was sealed away in complete isolation. As Powyll led a small company back to the mortal world, seeking to find the weapon that had freed the Morrigan in hopes that it might still be used against her, he made the startling discovery that the border was gone. He could feel the presence of the other world like a shadow in his own, could almost reach out a hand and touch its substance, but it would not open to him. He could not cross, and slowly it dawned on him what Jareth had done. There was nothing for it but to ride back to Fertith Fields, which had already become the interim seat of government, for none of them possessed the power that was the Ard Righ's birthright to cross unaided. Behind them they left the lady Belisama, her pale face marked by the silver tracks of tears, who rode unceasingly up and down the border until her horse fell underneath her and then continued walking, day and night, night and day, looking for a way through, her feet wearing a bare path through the heather.  
  
On the other side of the barrier, Lugh and Belenus soon made the same discovery. They gathered on the green hillside where Annwn's presence was strongest felt, the seven of the Folk who were left in the mortal world.  
  
Danu was the first to speak, shrugging her shoulders as she said, "I never intended to return anyway, I have my own people here. They call themselves the Tuatha de Danann. Isn't that sweet?" She wandered away to rejoin them, and many years later, having taught them marvelous things, she fell in battle defending them against the invading Milesians.  
  
Cernunnos was the next to leave. He never spoke a word, but his great horned head bowed as he blew the horn to call his hounds to him, their red ears flat against their skulls as they ran into the gathering night on a Hunt that was now without quarry. Angus and Brigit each laid a hand on Belenus' shoulder, who stood staring numbly at the fading hills, before turning back to their warm cottage and the comfort of each other, which was all they really wanted anyway.  
  
When the sky overhead had filled with glittering stars, Lugh finally stirred. "I will bury that weapon where no hand shall ever find it again," he said into the heavy air.  
  
"Lugh, my spirit has gone out of me," Belenus responded, his voice a mournful echo of spent mirth. "It has flown to my wife, and I have no more will in the world. Let me follow you, and return here once a year to try the path until it opens to me." Together, the two kinsmen moved off into the night.  
  
The one who was left harrumphed, lifted her ragged skirt to scratch her ankle, then hobbled over to a convenient boulder with the aid of her trusty stick. Settling herself onto it with a sigh, she lifted her wrinkled face to look up at the night sky, speaking to the constellations as if they were old friends. "Bah!" she muttered. "Young folk today, they think they know everything. Well, we'll just have to wait, won't we? She'll come in time, my dears, never fear. I make it, oh, a thousand years or so, not long at all. I just hope that poor boy doesn't get into trouble, though trouble's what he's got, right enough. Let's see, she'll need a map, hm, a compass, and what else, what else?" Pushing herself upright with an effort, Cailleach puttered away into the hills to await the coming of the Morrigan's bane.  
  
As for the Morrigan herself, she soon found that her jailer had been just a tad overconfident. In his defense, it should be noted that Jareth had very little time in which to come up with a plan to protect his kingdom and that he was quite willing to trade his own safety for that of his people. He had assumed wrongly, however, that by trapping the Morrigan in the land itself he had limited her power. Their battles raged without end until the city was smashed to rubble, the palace to ruins, and the scattered remnants of its unlucky citizens dug themselves in as deep as they could to escape destruction. She gave the king no rest, no respite, and she began to rediscover her old ways of tormenting an enemy in mind as well as in body. This was his capital and he reigned supreme, but the Morrigan had become a part of his kingdom and therefore a part of his power. Both together, master and slave, though which was which was impossible to say. She had the advantage, though, of being cruel and vicious as well as determined, and she was adept at the ways of the Old Powers.  
  
He resisted her torture for centuries, but little by little she slipped under his guard, pushing him to a truce here, a pact there. She knew the spell must end eventually and she wanted to be prepared to reclaim her kingdom when it did, and that meant she needed an army. Jareth had sealed the way into Annwn too well, but he had not considered the mortal world. She cleverly disguised her contracts as overtures of peace, waiting with terrible patience, and once in perhaps fifty years he slipped and agreed too hastily. At last, when a weary woman with eight hungry mouths to feed said the right words, he suddenly found himself trapped in a web of his own concessions. The snare of the Old Powers wound itself around his heart. He took the children, and then huddled in the ruins of his palace as their mother failed the Morrigan's test as accorded by the Law. The Old Powers have strict rules about such things: there must always be a test, a chance to win back what was stolen. He only emerged when the Carrion-crow had finished changing them into the first recruits of her new army.  
  
After that, something inside him died. He lost count of how many children he stole and never remembered a single one of their faces. They were only mortal, after all, their lives pitifully brief under any circumstances. The important thing was the safety of his kingdom. Over time, he grew to enjoy the sense of power as their desperate mothers and fathers cowered before him, begging for mercy. He even began adding his own frills here and there as they scuttled about like rats, thinking up impossible riddles and raising false alarms to send them astray. His hatred for the Morrigan burned hotter each day, but so did his love for the maze of stone she had created for the testing. Thwarting her schemes in subtle, clever ways became almost like an art to him. She desired her army to be swift and strong, so he learned to nudge the changing to make her creatures weak and foolish. She wanted giants, so he made midgets and then hated them because they were evidence of his weakness, his collaboration. And so it went until, on a stormy night nine hundred and ninety-one years after Jareth had sealed Scailtara against the Morrigan, a cross and tired fifteen-year-old girl wished that the goblins would come and take her baby brother away, right now. 


	2. Chapter 2

"I have to face him alone."  
  
The words pounded in Sarah's head, a counterpoint to the thudding of her sneakers on the stairs and the throbbing in her left knee as she ran. Stupid, she thought angrily to herself. All that heroic nonsense about adversaries meeting each other on an even playing field, shaking one another's hands, maybe offering each other tea before the final showdown. If there was one thing she'd learned from this nightmare, it was that no one ever played fair. And why had she left her hard-won companions behind? Just for some nagging feeling that this was the way things were supposed to be done! If she'd brought them with her, Hoggle could be acting as lookout, Sir Didymus would find the right path through this impossible room, and Ludo. . . Ludo could grab the Goblin King and sit on him. Or something. Now she was lost, so near the end, and heaving like a bellows as she forced her legs to keep running. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of red and white. Oh god, could it be? The seductive voice of the Goblin King echoed from every wall, but she couldn't hear the words. If this was a trick, she was done for. But if it wasn't. . . Sarah sprinted towards that spot of color.  
  
Her heart threatened to hammer its way out of her chest as she saw that it really was Toby, oblivious as only a baby could be as he happily played with something shiny. He was sitting on one of the impossibly suspended squares of stone a long, long way down. Between them, a chasm gaped at least thirty feet wide. Sarah didn't let herself think, didn't slow down a notch as she launched herself into empty space.  
  
Around her, the room suddenly began to break into pieces. Huge stone staircases spun by in a languid dance defying all physics as she floated gently down. Sarah kept her eyes focused on Toby, reaching out to him with every ounce of her will as she fell towards him as lightly as a feather on the wind. At last she felt the crunch of stone against the toes of her sneakers as she hit the ground very hard indeed - she had been falling at the usual velocity after all, tricked one last time by the Labyrinth. Her much-abused left knee twisted underneath her and pain bloomed in the joint. Holding on to consciousness with the grip of desperation, Sarah flung herself onto Toby, scooping him into her lap and pressing her cheek against the bit of fuzz he had for hair.  
  
"Oh Toby, oh honey," she sobbed, wildly rocking him back and forth as she clutched him in relief. "Everything's going to be all right now," she promised, ignoring the persistent (and by now very familiar) feeling of dread in her belly. She had done it, she had solved the Labyrinth and found her brother - but here they were, surrounded by bits of stone falling impossibly slowly towards the horizon, trapped in the goblin city. All along, the game had shown itself to be unforgiving and deadly, and Sarah was acutely aware that she still didn't know the rules.  
  
Suddenly, *he* was there. She knew it by the change in the wind, by the humming of the stones, by the tilt of the stars. Sarah raised her head to look at the Goblin King.  
  
He appeared out of the ruins of the staircase room, covered in white from head to foot, eyes glinting paired sapphire and obsidian. Sarah would have expected the color to look wrong on him - after all, she knew from firsthand experience that his heart was as black as his oubliette - but it didn't, somehow. In fact, she was struck by a strong impression that this was closer to the truth than anything she'd seen of him yet, illusion finally abandoned at the end of their long contest. She was shocked when her brain finally found the right word to describe it. He looked vulnerable. One white boot took a step in her direction, and Sarah instinctively backed up and tightened her grip on Toby, who squirmed against all this restraint. She knew how the story went from here; she could recite it in her sleep.  
  
Glaring at him from where she crouched on the flagstones, she began the litany. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered," she recited, loud and clear as a bell, "I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child that you have stolen."  
  
His shuttered eyes betrayed no surprise, but he was quick to step in and interrupt her. "Now Sarah - "  
  
"For my will is as strong as yours," she continued without pausing, "and my kingdom as great." There was more - the final bit, the most important part, but it wouldn't come. The pain in her knee was overwhelming, the world was crashing down around her, and even Toby was distracting her with his thrashing, and the words wouldn't come. Sarah felt tears prick at her eyes as the cold claw of panic grabbed her throat. To come so close, to have victory snatched away here at the very end!  
  
"Think of what I'm offering you, Sarah," his silver-smooth voice whispered in her ear. "Your dreams." A white-gloved hand lifted one of his glass spheres, holding the promise of rest, of no more pain. "Just love me, serve me, do as I say - and I will be your slave," he urged, his hand on her hair as gentle as a kiss and as relentless as a vise. Sarah felt the tears spill over and slide down her cheeks, blurring her vision. Misery choked her as a sense of ancient sorrow sank into her bones, the sadness left behind by each and every person who lost a child to that terrible Labyrinth.  
  
She might not know the right words, but she could say the truth. Solving the Labyrinth had at least taught her one thing. The Goblin King could put her in situations over which she had no control, but how she responded was always her choice, her decision what to do with what she had, and in that sense she would always be free. Raising her eyes to his face, she defied him one last time as she said, "You have no power over me." Somewhere, a clock struck the hour. A great wind wrapped itself around Sarah and Toby and bore them away, and the last sight that presented itself to her astonished gaze was the cold face of the Goblin King, vanishing in a spate of white feathers.  
  
The next thing she knew, Sarah was standing in her own living room surrounded by the fading sound of beating wings. The grandfather clock in front of her was striking midnight and she could hear a car pulling into the driveway. That started the wheels of panic turning again, because she was back, but had Toby come with her? Sarah took one step towards the stairs, then yelled in agony as her weight came down on her left knee, which promptly collapsed and dumped her in a heap at the foot of the staircase. That was where Karen and her father found her when they entered the living room a moment later, resting her forehead against the carpeted edge of one of the steps as she gathered her strength for one last push.  
  
"Sweetheart!" her dad cried, dropping to his knees beside her.  
  
"My goodness, Sarah!" Karen exclaimed. "Are you all right? What on earth happened?"  
  
Sarah looked up at their concerned faces and told the first of many lies about that night. "I was coming down the stairs too fast, and I tripped." Attempting to straighten her leg, she winced at the resulting lancet of pain and added, "I think I need to go to the hospital. First, though, can you check on Toby for me? I, uh, might have woken him up when I fell." But she hadn't, because when Karen popped her head into the nursery to look, he was sleeping in his crib just as soundly as could be.  
  
* * * * *  
  
From the spreading pine tree in the Williams' front yard, Jareth watched with owl eyes as Sarah's parents helped her hop one-legged to the car. That leap had been a last act of complete desperation. Not one in a hundred thousand people would have attempted it, and in truth the girl was lucky she hadn't dashed out her brains on the hard stone floor. He had seen countless people face other, equally daunting obstacles, and they had all quailed or died. Not this one, though. Yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness as he watched the progress of the vehicle down the street. Launching himself from the branch, he spread his conjured wings and followed.  
  
Soaring above the scattered remnants of the night's storm, Jareth turned his flight moonward and relished the sensation of cool air sliding through his feathers. Something was stirring in him, like the waking of memory after a long sleep. The girl had run farther and faster than any he had ever seen, and still he had only watched her so that he could better plan how to bring her to grief. The game had suddenly changed when she fell into his oubliette. As she defied him in the catacombs, Jareth felt a sliver of her anger bury itself in his heart, and the burst of warmth and wild hope it produced was the most terrifying thing that had happened to him in centuries. He didn't understand the sensations or why an unremarkable mortal child inspired them, but he did know that hope was a weapon in the hands of the Phantom Queen, and anyone who brought such feelings must be destroyed. The Labyrinth, too, had tasted something in Sarah that it did not like at all as she crawled through its belly, and their common purpose should have been more than enough. The girl should have died, should have lost her way amid the thousand traps so cunningly laid, but instead she had grown stronger! As he swooped lazily above the Williams' car, Jareth's mind spun in a vortex of images from those brief hours.  
  
She had grown stronger, and his treacherous subconscious had tricked him into thinking that he had found the perfect solution. After all, what young lady could resist the lure of a masquerade? He would catch her with storybook endings and destroy her, winning the contest and purging himself of irrational hope in a single blow. That had been the plan at least, but it had only lasted until she had kicked her way through the be-ribboned crowd of his imagination and planted herself, with her usual willfulness, squarely in his arms. Surprised and taken off guard, Jareth met her gaze full on. In the depths of her brown eyes he saw himself as he once had been, and as the monster he had become. A small and traitorous part of him had already realized that he had lost. She was only a child. The darkness she woke in him was best left buried.  
  
That moment had shaken him to the core. His kingdom took precedence over everything else, of course, and therefore his ends justified his means, but the innocence in her steady eyes was an accusation that cut through his guard as easily as if she had buried a knife in his gut. Her presence drew him as implacably as his attraction repulsed him. Caught in uncertainty, Jareth circled above the hospital to watch, and wait.  
  
* * * * *  
  
For the week following her operation to repair the torn ligament in her knee ("That must have been some trip down the stairs," the nurse commented), Sarah wallowed in the attention of her family and in her drug- induced stupor. Everything was lovely, even Karen was lovely, and Toby was especially lovely. Sarah kept him as near to her as possible, watching him play as if she wanted to devour him with her eyes whenever she couldn't actually hold him on her lap. The painkillers kept all unwanted thoughts at bay, and she drew out this period of mindlessness as long as she could. One sunny morning, however, Sarah woke up and knew that it was time. Instead of taking her medicines, she gritted her teeth and asked Karen to bring down her journal. Toby seemed to have weathered his trial unchanged, although he had acquired an unfortunate penchant for playing with glass things, but the same could not be said for Sarah. The colors and smells of the Goblin City were already dulling in her mind, and in the bright sunlight the whole adventure seemed unreal. She had fought an incredible struggle in that city and she didn't want to lose a moment of it.  
  
It took more than a month to get the story written down to her satisfaction, and even then she thought the details rang a little hollow. How could she describe the feel of Ludo's fur or the breaking of one of Jareth's crystals when there was nothing like them at all in this world? She couldn't even begin to approach the Bog. At last, though, she had the bare bones of the story, complete with clumsy illustrations, which all told took up two bound journals. She finished it with this paragraph: "This is a faithful account of my trip through the Goblin City, and I swear that everything written here is the truth. This is for me, in the future, so that I will know it was real. I've seen a white owl flying away from the tree in our front yard a couple of times since I got back, and I know better now than to take anything for granted. I'm making a promise to myself, that every time I touch the scar on my knee I'll remember what really happened." She looked at the words for a long time, then closed the book, tied both volumes up with string, and hid them in a box under her bed.  
  
* * * * *  
  
On its surface the earth nurtured life, its sun-warmed soil giving foundation to all things that grew or crawled. Like herself, however, its heart was silent and cold. It was coldest in her belly where light never penetrated, while her back baked in the sun. She recognized the constant heat as unnatural because it lacked the sting of real sunlight and because it never set, though she couldn't see the strange, unworldly color it cast over the Labyrinth or the web of spells that held it in place and kept it alive. Heat and cold were almost the only sensations left to her, although she could sense the pressure of running feet across her stone skin and could still savor destruction. The heat of a body as it fell into her depths was like wine; the rage of defeat against her walls was like opium. When she brought her hands together, towers crumpled and the creatures scampering through her maze cowered in terror. These amusements made her captivity bearable, but the thought of Annwn, rich and pulsing with life outside her grasp, tormented her.  
  
The time was soon approaching when that little kinglet, Abnoba's arrogant son, would burn in the heat of a thousand bonfires and freeze in the ice of a thousand winters before she let him die. First, though, he must be made to help her. She was close, so close to breaking him completely. She could practically taste his despair as he wandered her catacombs and governed this mockery of a kingdom from his toppled throne. At only one moment had she feared for her plans - a few heartbeats past, when the careful work of countless years had nearly come undone as that slip of a girl-child had faced him down and reclaimed her brother.  
  
She had to be careful at this last, most critical stage. One slip would fan the embers of the kinglet's resistance, fueling a blaze instead of puffing out the last sparks, and timing was of the essence. It was therefore highly inconvenient that rock and earth had a rather unique sense of the passage of time. Her heartbeats were measured in eons now, which made it difficult to keep to a schedule since decades slid by like seconds. She let him alone for what seemed, to her, to be the space between two long, earthy breaths, and then whispered words that would bring her to his attention, wherever he was in his ruined city.  
  
Some unknown amount of time later, she began to rumble in annoyance at his tardiness, recasting her magic to seek him out. This time the spell returned with an answer: he was no longer in Scailtara. The Phantom Queen shifted testily, whole sections of the Labyrinth rearranging as her ire swept through its expanse, and thought about where he could have gotten to. There was really only one possibility, for the seals into Annwn were still closed. He must have gone into the mortal world on his own, but why under seven suns would he do such a thing?  
  
Suspicion curled in her stony breast, knocking a hole through an oubliette and sinking the Firey's forest into a mire. That girl, the one who had beaten the Labyrinth. Something about her had tasted unusually foul, the hint of a threat and a menace that could foil the schemes wrought so carefully in secret. Grinding her bones in anger, the Morrigan sifted through all the tastes and tidbits that rested in her great belly until she found the one she wanted, then cast her thought to its source. Bound as she was, she could only cross the border in visions, but her sight was as sharp as in the old days when men had cowered before her as she prophesied their deaths. She found the girl easily enough, tossing and turning as she slept, and found Jareth there too, watching her window through yellow eyes. Gnashing her teeth (and grinding up a quarter of the Goblin City in the process), the Morrigan called him back to Scailtara with the voice of the Old Powers.  
  
The force of her summons caused the girl to jump wide awake as the magic banged at the glass, wrapping itself around Jareth. It surrounded him, started to squeeze - and slipped right off him to fall heavily to earth, where it wriggled about until it frayed into nothingness. Jareth didn't even notice, owl eyes fixed unblinking on the girl's shuttered window. The Morrigan screeched in shock. It had taken years to leash him to her call, and now all was undone! Snarling under her breath, she smashed a few alleys to make herself feel better, then settled in for some serious thinking.  
  
She was losing her influence over the king, that much was clear, and it was equally obvious that the mortal girl had something to do with it. Perhaps the situation could be redeemed. The girl might even be made to be the fulcrum around which Jareth's surrender hinged. Mortal lives were so fragile, so easily disrupted, and surely Abnoba's overconfident offspring would recoil before the very thing that had killed his mother. Stone lips curved in a cruel smile that altered the course of several major roads, and the Morrigan set to work.  
  
She had always done her best craft in the dark. Jareth's unchanging sun was an annoyance, but she dove downward to the cold dark at her center until she was surrounded by ice and blackness. There, she hummed and spat and brought out her collection of dreams, captured from nightmares throughout the ages. Snuffling through it until she found the bits she wanted, she drew substance out of the darkness to spin a delicate thread of dream-stuff. The vat of her imagination dyed it the caustic colors of blood and betrayal, a burning skein twisting in the dark. When the thread was ready, she wove it into a cloak as thin as gold leaf and as slippery as wet moss. With the work complete in her hands, she waited for the dark of the moon in the mortal world.  
  
It took her many casts before she caught a trace of what she was looking for. He had buried himself away from the world of men, sealed beneath a windswept hill to dream of hunting. She found him sleeping, and in delight she danced a quick caper that turned the goblin barracks upside down before she tossed her sly cloak over his massive form. Instantly, he became restless and uneasy, his slumbering hounds whimpering in the grip of his dream. The Morrigan smiled, for she had woven very well indeed, and the one who lay before her was already half-mad with years of wandering in desire and despair. Under her cloak, her brother dreamed of the joy of the Hunt and of the sealing of the way into Annwn that had cleaved him from his quarry. Into this framework of truth she plaited a thread of clever lies, whispering of a way to break the barrier and reopen the path. She filled his sleep with images of guilt and betrayal, of blood magic and dark plots, all tied to a mortal line whose lives gave the sundering spell its power. In the dream, she showed him that now there was but one of them left. A young girl. . .  
  
Cernunnos woke with a start, struggling to rise until his huge antlers caught in the soft earth of his barrow and he saw the shadow of the Morrigan before him. "Sister," he greeted her, his voice cracked with disuse. His eyes burned like flames in the dark under the hill. "Is this true?"  
  
"It is true," the Morrigan confirmed. She saw the madness of bloodlust in his eye and quickly pressed her advantage. "One Hunt, brother, is all it will take. Name her your quarry and the way into Annwn will open again!"  
  
Heaving upwards, the Horned One tore the earth asunder until he had pulled himself out of the hill, his new-woken hounds at attention behind him, eager to be on the scent. "I hunt!" he cried, bringing a massive hunting horn to his lips and sounding a long, lonely note. "Who shall be named?" he demanded, spreading his great arms against the stars that spilled across the sky.  
  
The Morrigan grinned and hissed, "Sarah Williams."  
  
"Sarah Williams!" Cernunnos howled, and his dogs raised their white throats and howled with him, then set their red ears against their skulls as they streamed into the night. The Horned One himself stayed only long enough to raise a hand in salute to his dark sister, and then the earth shook under his feet as he raced away to the sea. Though the quarry lay over mountains and across the water, she could not hope to escape the Wild Hunt. Sighing in satisfaction (which caused a small earthquake in the Goblin City), the Morrigan returned her shadow to its stone prison. Not for much longer, she sang to herself. Not much longer.  
  
Neither the Morrigan nor her brother noticed two bright button eyes peering out from the copse of rowan trees growing rather unexpectedly at the base of the bluff. After all sound of the dogs' passage had faded, a round little woman huffed and puffed her way out of her hiding place and stumped up the hill to poke at the disturbed earth with her stick, then turned her face to the west to gaze after the Hunt. 


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah lay ramrod straight under the sheet, her body vibrating with tension as she listened to her breath whistle quickly in and out. Her hands curled unconsciously into fists as her eyes darted from corner to corner, seeking a shadow that shouldn't be there, a patch of night darker than the rest. A man-shaped shadow, with a crystal on its fingertips. . .  
  
There was nothing there. Nothing was ever there. Sarah counted breaths, forcing herself away from the threshold of panic as her head sank back into the pillow. From the twisted, tangled bedclothes she could tell it had been another restless night, although the tiredness in her muscles could have come from her abrupt awakening as much as anything else. She turned her head to look at the bare spot on the nightstand and willed herself not to go find the phone, call her parents, and demand that they check on Toby. When she'd noticed a few days ago that her hand was automatically reaching for the receiver before she was even fully awake, she'd hidden it in the bottom of her closet. He had always been there before, and this night would be no different. She hated this time of year. It stirred up bad memories.  
  
Giving up on sleep for the moment, Sarah rolled out of bed and opened the slats on the shutters to peer out at the garden. She scanned the branches of the nearest tree and relaxed a little when she saw her own personal night watchman sitting on his usual perch. He kept an unpredictable schedule, but usually his appearance meant that tomorrow would be a good day. This time, she chose to take his presence as reassurance that Toby was snug in his bed right where he should be. Knowing that even owl eyes probably couldn't see her through the shutters, she waggled her fingertips at him anyway.  
  
Although she guessed he had something to do with her adventure all those years ago, Sarah had long given up trying to puzzle out exactly why a snowy owl occasionally showed up outside her window. His ghostly shape reminded her of magic and made her think of the extraordinary potential hidden in everyday things. After all, there was nothing remarkable about an owl sitting in a tree in the moonlight. It was only magical because she allowed it to be, and that, she thought, was a very great secret indeed. That was why all her stories were for children. Most adults did not believe in letting themselves feel the enchantment that wound through hidden tracks in their lives.  
  
As usual, she'd left a bit of her dinner on the post by the deck just in case her owl came by. Hoping he'd taken it, she put a hand to the latch and moved to pull back the shutters, automatically reaching out her other hand to catch the marble she placed so carefully each night. Her fingers closed on empty air and her heart skipped a beat. Kneeling slowly, she retrieved the cats-eye from the carpet and rolled it around her hand in unconscious mimicry of the thoughts jumbling in her brain.  
  
She was sure she had set it in its usual spot - her routine was too engrained for her to miss something like that. Her paranoia paraphernalia, Karen called it, but really all it boiled down to was that Sarah liked to know when someone came into her house, and certain things might opt not to use the door. She pulled the shutters fully back and opened the window to stick her head outside. The air was hot and still. There was no feel of a storm, although she remembered hearing a crash right at the end of her dream that might have been thunder. Shivering despite the heat, Sarah craned her head this way and that but couldn't see anything untoward.  
  
As she looked up at her owl, sitting unmoved on his branch, she muttered, "I don't suppose you noticed anything unusual, did you?" The yellow reflection of his eyes vanished momentarily as he blinked. "Didn't think so," she said, pulling the window closed. She had a feeling in her gut that something had been here, and even though it seemed to be gone it had destroyed any hope of sleep. On impulse Sarah stepped into her sandals, grabbed her notebook, and went downstairs. She opened the back door carefully (it creaked at an unfortunate pitch that always seemed to wake her neighbor) and slipped out into the moonlight. She was wearing nothing but flip-flops and the white silk set that Karen had given her at college graduation, but there was no one to see her except the owl, and she didn't suppose he would mind.  
  
Settling herself cross-legged on the wreck of a deck chair, she tilted her face to the moon and let the bonds of reality slip away from her, words and pictures flow through her mind like water. Slowly, little rivulets of ideas began to draw themselves away from the greater current, and before she knew it she was scribbling madly. The light was too poor to see anything, but she wrote large and trusted the feel of the position of her hand on the paper. Some of her best ideas came when she was writing in the dark. She let the words flow for several minutes, then abruptly set down paper and pen and got up to stretch. She had to keep herself loose, that was the secret. Casting a glance at the post where she usually left her tidbits, she was pleased to find it empty, and that brought her mind back to the owl.  
  
Looking up at the tree, she noticed that his eyes looked much bigger from down here. They practically took up his whole face, and really didn't look very normal. In fact, as she watched she became more and more convinced that something was wrong. He didn't appear to be as healthy as usual - actually, he didn't seem to be breathing. If owls could go pale, then he had done it. Did owls have heart attacks? Alarmed, she moved until she was not quite underneath him (he was still a bird, after all) and waved her arms madly to try and get a response. It would have been horribly embarrassing if there had been anyone else up there, since the silk top was cut awfully low and she didn't even want to think about how much cleavage she might be flashing, but that thought was pushed out of her mind when the branch on which the owl was sitting suddenly snapped. His wings flailed wildly for a second before he slipped and fell, and Sarah was so equally torn between jumping to catch him and leaping out of the way of the falling branch that she stayed exactly where she was. He recovered himself in mid- fall and turned the tumble into a dive, then took swiftly to flight. Sarah caught a glimpse of his tailfeathers as he vanished into the night, suddenly worried that she might never see him again. She had never approached him before. Clearly he wasn't an average animal, but even above- average animals probably got spooked. She kicked the offending branch angrily, then bent down to look at its broken end. Funny, but it almost looked gouged, like talons had scored right through it. Frowning, she turned her head in the direction her owl had gone and hoped that he was all right.  
  
Her vaguely worried mood stayed with her all day, which was unfortunate because this was the one day a year when teachers and students truly put aside all conflict and come together in one unified and glorious celebration of summer - the last day of school. Sarah had promised her class that they would all get to read their final creative writing projects out loud if they wanted, and she buried the pang of their impending promotion to the seventh grade under enthusiastic cries of "Miz Williams, Miz Williams, me first, okay?" She signed yearbooks like mad and hugged every kid who came near her, and when the last parents had reclaimed their sons and daughters for the summer, she sat in the chair behind her desk and slowly gathered the end-of-school presents together, lingering over each one. There were a lot of night birds that year, since they were known to be her favorite. Her kids were so sweet. A knock at the door pulled her out of her reverie. It was Bill Cribbins from 6B, holding an apple in his hand.  
  
"Hey," he greeted her softly as he leaned against the doorjamb. "Looks like you got quite a haul."  
  
Sarah snuffled in what she hoped was an unobtrusive manner and eyed her colleague from under lowered lashes. He could have been the long-lost twin of Mr. Walker, her old eighth grade teacher and her first big crush. Bill was tall with bushy brown hair that looked best when disheveled, and by the first week of March had already lost his winter pallor to the beginnings of a tan. He laughed easily, knew a lot about books and music, and was a few months shy of his thirty-first birthday. He was also obvious, in a sweet sort of way. If she had been any other woman, Sarah would probably have been blessing each and every one of her lucky stars, and she certainly appreciated the attention. She thought he was funny and charming and handsome, but in one critical way he was just the same as every other grown- up she knew. He didn't see the magic in the world, and he didn't understand why she wanted to.  
  
Running her hand over a homemade pencil holder, Sarah heaved a sigh that repressed more than just nostalgia at seeing her second year of students advance away from her. "I don't know how parents do it. Watch their kids grow up, I mean." She leaned back and looked around her empty classroom.  
  
"It gets easier," Bill said gently, moving across the room to lean his hip against her desk. "You realize that each year is an opportunity to start over, get to know more bright young faces. Hey, I talked to Betty and she said you were planning to stay next year."  
  
"What?" Sarah said, startled. "Of course I'm planning to stay! Why would I not?"  
  
The relief in his smile flattered her and made her feel guilty at the same time. "Well, you're a famous author now," he said, winking at her. "I loved it, by the way. No wonder your kids are crazy about you."  
  
Sarah beamed at him. If there was one backdoor into her heart, her writing was it. "I hardly think one published work counts as famous," she laughed, "but I'll get there someday! There really is nothing like teaching kids to write, though, especially at this age. They're so fresh and full of imagination. Sally wrote this amazing story about a monster who lives under her sink, who guards the door to the kingdom of the dust bunnies so they can't get out and overrun everybody's house. . ." The slight shift of his eyes, the impatient movement of his fingers against her desk were more than enough to communicate his wandering attention. She'd seen him reading her book in the library, flying through it like wolves were at his heels. He hadn't enjoyed it, she knew. He'd been bored, and it wasn't his fault. With the fluidity of long practice, she shifted the conversation back to reality. "So, have you got any fun plans for the summer?"  
  
This was much better territory for him. "Absolutely," he grinned. "I'm finally going to build that extension I've been talking about for so long. It's a nice location, but the house just isn't big enough for a family."  
  
It was too obvious to be comfortable. Sarah realized that she was fidgeting and made herself fold her hands calmly in her lap. "That sounds great, Bill," she said.  
  
"Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. How about you?"  
  
"I'm actually leaving the day after tomorrow to visit my family for a week or two, hopefully get in a little hiking. Although I dread to think what winter's done to my stamina," she said ruefully.  
  
Bill tapped his heel against her desk for a moment before picking up a little stuffed screech owl and turning it over in his hands. "First things first," he said. "Let me take you to Betty's party tonight. Can I pick you up at seven?"  
  
She'd been planning on going anyway, and it was just a party. Being with a date was more fun than going stag, and she could be careful not to lead him on. But the real reason she raised her eyes and said, "Yes, Bill, that sounds lovely," was that she was lonely, tired of feeling like an odd mix of very old and very young. Sarah knew there were wonderful, sensitive, moonstruck men out there somewhere - she just had to find one. And in the meantime, Bill was a good date.  
  
He was at her door right on time, and she had to admit that he cleaned up really well when he wanted to. She looked pretty much the same as she always did, and as always, it took his breath away. Bill suppressed the urge to put his arm around her waist as he walked her to the car. Clearly they weren't at that stage yet, though god knows he wanted to be. She looked lovely, her understated style accentuating the elegance that imbued every movement, drawing attention to her beauty without interfering with it. He recognized the look of a woman who was dressing up for a man and he was enough of a realist to know that it wasn't him. Over many months of observation, he had decided that whoever the guy was, he wasn't coming back. And even though tonight she was dressed to the nines for someone else, he had faith that someday it would be for him. Bill firmly believed in the power of positive thinking.  
  
As he opened the car door for her, Sarah could feel the tension emanating from her date. The evening had barely begun, and already she wondered if this had been a mistake. Mentally groping for a harmless topic of conversation, she turned her gaze out of the window just in time to see a flash of white. It had passed in a second, but the shape against the trees very much resembled that of a snowy owl in full flight, and suddenly her spirits soared. Her personal good luck charm wasn't going to abandon her after all! By the time they arrived at Betty's house she had caught another good glimpse of him as he kept pace with the car, and with that worry was laid to rest, Sarah decided to really enjoy herself.  
  
Relief animated her more than she realized, and she was less guarded than she had planned to be. Poor Bill was a goner before the dancing even started. Just after ten (teachers being, on the whole, an early crowd), Betty's older son produced a collection of CDs and a banged-up boom box and everyone headed for the backyard to sway happily to eighties music. Sarah had her head on Bill's shoulder and his hands on her waist, contentedly zoned out as they rocked back and forth under the spitting of the bug light. It was all that a single girl could ask for - good beer, good friends, cheesy love songs to dance to. Her unfocused eyes floated up over the dipping heads, past the paper lamps strung across the fence, to the large elm in the neighbor's yard. Suddenly, she felt dead sober and ice cold.  
  
Her night watchman was there, yellow eyes burning into her with a look of such intense hatred that it struck her almost like a physical blow. No - his look wasn't for her, it was for the man holding her! Sarah gulped and acted without conscious thought. "Oh, Bill," she said, her voice too high, "I'm just dying out here in this heat. Let's go in and get another beer, okay?"  
  
"Okay," he murmured, missing the frightened look on her face. In his current state of infatuation and buzz, he'd have gone to the moon with her if she'd asked him. Steering them quickly inside, Sarah pushed him in the direction of the kitchen and pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead, pacing as she tried desperately to think. For some reason, she knew with absolute certainty that the owl out there was dangerous. And that was crazy, because she also knew that he would never hurt her, and she was pretty sure he would never hurt Bill. His eyes, though, had been filled with pure, white-hot hate, and she had no doubt that if looks could kill (and who said sometimes they couldn't?), Bill would be a pile of smoldering ash right now.  
  
After she had had a minute to cool down, Sarah began to feel much calmer. The house was well-lit and they were surrounded by people, and thus were probably in the safest possible place. Telling Bill of the incident was a laughable idea, and the more she thought about it, the more it seemed that the best option was simply to act as though nothing had happened. When Bill returned with two bottles, he found her smiling and ready to stay inside and take advantage of the air conditioner for a while, and failed to notice her white knuckles or the tightness at the corners of her eyes. Sarah dragged them into conversation with a few of their older colleagues and made sure that the rest of the evening was spent indoors and in company.  
  
After an hour of nothing but water, Bill drove her home and walked her to the door, working up his courage to ask for a kiss. Sarah saw the look on his face and neatly preempted him with a handshake and a smile to take the sting out of it. She felt mean, but that was that. The jaunty bounce in his step as he walked back to his car made her feel uneasy. Things had clearly spiraled out of her control tonight in more than one area.  
  
Annoyed with herself, with Bill, and most particularly with all things avian, she stomped upstairs, took off her shoes, and threw them at the closet. Marching to the window, she opened it, stuck her head out, and glared at the empty tree across from her. "If you ever, *ever*," she repeated for emphasis, "do anything to hurt Bill, I swear I'll buy a rifle and shoot you myself!" Her anger fell heavily in the hot night, but sullen silence was the only reply. She listened until she started to feel foolish for talking to an absent owl, then grumpily closed the window and went to bed.  
  
The next day was a busy one because she planned to be gone at least two weeks and had laundry, packing, and a host of little things to do. The great debate to call or not to call raged in her mind as she worked, and she found herself casting more and more glances towards the phone as the day wore on. The object of her dilemma solved it himself by ringing her up to ask her to dinner. She was so relieved to hear him alive and presumably not assaulted by owls that she almost said yes, but forced herself to take a rain check. There was too much on her plate right now, but when she got back they needed to sit down and have a long talk.  
  
The dreams were bad again that night, and she woke aching to put her arms around her brother. Tomorrow brought the anniversary of her ill-fated wish, and whenever it was humanly possible, Sarah spent that day hovering over Toby like a hawk. It was a long drive north from Virginia, but she was determined. Their parents thought she was loony, but they were also glad to see her. Starting early to take advantage of the cooler temperatures, she loaded up her little Subaru, locked her front door, and waved a cheerful see-you-later to her neighborhood. Popping a mix into the tape deck, she rolled down the windows and sang along lustily. There was nothing like the feeling of being on the road!  
  
Almost twelve hours later, she had to admit that there was also nothing like pulling into the driveway of your destination at long last. Climbing stiffly out of her seat, she limped around the back of the car to get her duffle and was immeasurably pleased when she heard Toby's voice cry, "Mom! Dad! She's here!" A battering ram of ten-year-old exuberance spilled out of the pristinely white screen door and vaulted the steps to slam directly into her stomach. With a joyful "Oof!" Sarah picked him up bodily and whirled him around.  
  
"Wow, you're getting big!" she gasped as she put him down.  
  
"I'm the tallest boy in my class," he informed her proudly. Grabbing her hand, he leaned all his weight against it to drag her towards the house. "Come see the train that Dad and I are building!" Bob and Karen emerged a moment later, Dad grinning as he hugged her around Toby and Karen giving her a friendly smile as she leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. Sarah let them pull her into the house, happier than she could say to be surrounded by family. Even if it wasn't the original model, it still felt like coming home. 


	4. Chapter 4

AN: First, a big thank-you to all those who have taken the time to read and review; it's much appreciated! Second, I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news. Summer comes, and that means that I'll have no access to a computer. I plan to work on this story all summer, hopefully having it finished by the fall, but there's going to be a three-month-long hiatus in postings. I hate it when people do that. I'm sorry. I think it will be worth the wait, though. There will be one more chapter going up after this before I take my leave of absence (because leaving it here for three months would be *too* mean), and I'll try to get it to a good stopping point. Happy summer to everyone!  
  
* * * * *  
  
Sarah thrashed and sweated and gritted her teeth all through that night, trapped in the nightmare of another night nine years ago. This time she stood on a broad, straight road of gray cement, grinning skulls lining its length down to where she could clearly see the throne at the other end. *He* sat there, bouncing Toby on his knee and shaking his head, his silver voice filling the space between them as he whispered, "What a pity." Sarah started to run, but as often happens in dreams, the faster she went, the farther away they got. Sobbing in desperation, she reached out her hands to plead. She was too far away, she could never cross the distance, and Toby would be lost to the stroke of the hour.  
  
The bong of the grandfather clock downstairs brought her bolt upright in bed, clutching the sheet to her chin. For a panicked moment she thought she really was back there, nine years ago, and then her eyes began picking out details from the pale light leaking in around the edge of the shade. It was her old room, but with none of the trappings of a teenager's refuge. The bric-a-brac was long gone, the first victims to fall before her reordered priorities when she'd come out of the Labyrinth. The stuffed animals had been given to goodwill when Toby outgrew them and her books had come with her to Virginia. She sat in a stranger's room, papered in the muted blues and whites of guest bedrooms everywhere.  
  
She was grateful for the unfamiliarity because it was proof that she and Toby had survived that night, that she had won him back. Having fallen out of the habit of counting the strokes of the clock, she leaned over the edge of the bed and dug around in her bag until she produced a watch. It was just after seven and Toby would be getting up to go to his own last day of school. Sarah swung her feet into her flip-flops and went downstairs.  
  
The smell of pancakes and maple syrup filled the kitchen. The rumble in her stomach betrayed her presence even as her eyes were drawn like a magnet to Toby's curly head, bent over his breakfast to give it the serious attention it deserved. Spatula in hand, Karen turned around with a bright "Good morning!"  
  
Sarah helped herself to some orange juice and sniffed appreciatively. "Wow, this smells great! There's nothing like pancakes in the morning to tell you you're home. I'm lucky if I get a grapefruit most days!" As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she mentally kicked herself.  
  
Lifting the edge of a pancake to see if it was done, Karen noted, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Skipping it is so unhealthy!"  
  
Sarah was quick to stick a finger in that particular dike. "I know, I was just kidding. I make sure to have a bran muffin and a glass of fresh orange juice every day." Karen flashed her a smile and handed her a plate of pancakes. Sarah bent her head over them to savor the aroma of buttermilk and joined her brother at the table.  
  
She rode along with Karen to drop Toby at his school because she couldn't bear to let him out of her sight until she had to. Returning to find her dad ready with half an hour to spare before his drive, the three adults sat over coffee and discussed Sarah's drive up and how the weather was likely to behave in the coming week. After Bob made his farewells and left, Karen turned to Sarah and said briskly, "The ladies and I are having lunch in town today, and they would love to meet you. Would you like to come?"  
  
To cover any hesitation, Sarah finished off her coffee in one long pull, and as she put her cup down she replied, "Of course. That sounds lovely. When do you want to leave?"  
  
"Eleven-thirty will be fine," Karen said.  
  
Sarah rose and started to stack dishes. "That's perfect. I was hoping to do a little work in the garden this morning."  
  
Moving to the sink, the two women began rinsing and tidying. "I'm afraid it's gone quite to seed in your absence," Karen sighed as she started the dishwasher. "Both your father and I seem to have completely black thumbs."  
  
"That's because you're too sensible to spend all your time on your knees in the dirt!" Sarah replied, and went upstairs to change.  
  
Karen considered the crisp white knees of her trousers and nodded in agreement. "Be sure you're clean before we have to go!" she called in the direction of her eccentric stepdaughter.  
  
It was cooler here up north, and Sarah enjoyed the feeling of sun on her neck as she dug through the weeds, uprooting them onto a pile that quickly grew to a discouraging size. Years of neglect had erased any semblance of the order she had imposed in high school, and several species had succumbed to competition with their neighbors or with wild interlopers and needed replanting. Only a major renovation would turn the savage plot back into a garden, but the sensations of trowel and earth in her hands and the smell of green things were familiar and peaceful, and Sarah felt her anxiety gradually slip away.  
  
She made sure to go inside well before Karen might come looking for her, and they spent a pleasant enough afternoon in the company of mothers who ooh-ed and ah-ed appreciatively over the author of a much-loved book. One lady had even brought a copy to be autographed, and the sight of the crisp corners already becoming slightly dog-eared touched Sarah's heart. Of course, they all wanted to hear about her "young man," and Sarah silently apologized to Bill as she made blatant use of him to satisfy the gossips. As soon as she could, she nudged the conversation away from herself and back into its well-worn course on the personal life of the mayor and the general failings of school officials. By the end of the luncheon Sarah was perilously close to ripping her hair out, but the little group disbanded before she reached the crisis point. Karen was pleased with the outing, and that in itself was worth a few handfuls of hair.  
  
When they pulled up outside of Toby's school that afternoon, Sarah dug her fingernails into her palms until she caught sight of him in the midst of the screaming swarm of children, and later that night she knelt outside his door long after the others had gone to bed, praying with all her might. Perhaps a benevolent higher power deigned to listen, for Toby bounced into her room at six-thirty the next morning, eyes shining and ready for summer fun.  
  
With the horrid day behind her for another year, Sarah settled down to enjoy her family. She and Toby went swimming in the neighborhood pool almost every morning, and in the evenings they baked with Karen or barbequed with their father. Their nightly game of spades became a highly contested event, with Sarah and Toby emerging victorious as often as not. Sarah treasured those tranquil days, because as much as she hoped that this time things would be different, she knew it wouldn't last.  
  
Sure enough, a week after she first arrived the bickering started. It began in small ways. Sarah left her gardening shoes by the door while she ran upstairs to put up her hair, and Karen snapped at her for getting dirt on the carpet. At the pool, Toby managed to get burned even through two layers of sunblock, and Karen mentioned the importance of proper skin care every thirty minutes for the rest of the day. Sarah started spending more time outside, and Toby looked at her with worried eyes and made her promise not to go away without telling him first. Both of them recognized the pattern, but neither of them knew what to do about it.  
  
By the time they were well into the second week of her visit, Sarah was spending almost all her energy on maintaining civility to Karen. Saddened but not surprised, she dug out her hiking boots and took to the woods. Toby accompanied her once, but walking for a long time and then turning around and going back the way you came doesn't hold much appeal for the average ten-year-old. Before generalized war could break out, Sarah announced to the family that she had to leave that Sunday. The day before her departure, she spent the morning with Toby in the pool, then treated herself to an afternoon drive to the highest peak within fifty miles and set out to climb it.  
  
The sun was past its zenith when she strapped on her day pack and set her feet uphill, and most of the people on the trail were headed in the opposite direction. The air smelled of sweat and sunscreen and leaves, and the breeze on her face was more than welcome. As her legs found their rhythm, Sarah let her mind wander. The state of affairs with Karen ate up a considerable amount of her attention, and she mulled the situation over and over in her mind without turning up any new answers. Every time she left after a fight, she felt like she was running away, but bitter experience had shown her the futility of staying. How ironic that the best way to keep their family together seemed to be for them to be apart most of the time.  
  
Freed from conscious guidance, Sarah's feet brought her to a fork in the road and seized the opportunity to spurn the crowded path in favor of a quiet, narrow trail that wound back into the hills, away from the peak. She realized her mistake after about ten paces, but a critical glance cast at the steady stream of humanity hiking its way to or from the top of the mountain decided her. She wanted solitude more than she wanted a view.  
  
The leafy canopy cast the side trail in permanent shade. The path was muddy and poorly maintained, fraught with exposed roots and nearly disappearing in several places. Keeping her footing required concentration and often a bit of scrambling, but it was cool and very peaceful. Sarah heard an occasional sharp birdcall above the ambient buzz of invisible insects and the gentle puffs of her own breathing. At length, the branches overhead thinned and pulled back, the trail widened into a respectable path, and she emerged into an empty picnic area that sat at the shores of a small lake, choking in water weeds.  
  
Visitors were evidently sparse because there was no garbage to be seen anywhere near the weather-beaten tables, and no sign of a trash barrel. The sense of desertion was complete, and Sarah felt butterflies in her stomach as she approached the lake, already imagining the stories that might take place here. The water was shallow and brackish, the perfect habitat for a solitary water fairy who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. There would be a girl - no, a group of boys and girls who happened to stumble across its lonely haunt. . .  
  
Deep in her invention, Sarah sat down in the long grass at the shore and pulled out a sandwich and a notebook. She wrote for a long time, taking frequent breaks to lift her head and gaze across the lake, lost in her tale. It wasn't until the sun shot its late rays into her eyes that she frowned, came back to herself, and noticed the time.  
  
"Oh jeez!" she yelled, jumping up and stuffing the book into her pack. Because of her afternoon start she had counted on some twilight hiking, but that had been along the main trail which was open and impossible to miss. If the narrow track to the lake wasn't in the dark by now, it very soon would be, and she doubted that even the full moon would penetrate that thick canopy. She would have to hurry.  
  
Sarah was fairly sure that she had come less than two miles, but the quality of the terrain made it rough going. As she loped into the forest, she saw that the light was still good but already threatening to fade. Lungs pumping, hands reaching for help from nearby branches, she planted each foot heavily so that she didn't slip in the mud. She wasn't used to running with a pack and the slick knobs of tree roots seemed to materialize maliciously underneath her. Focused intently on the ground beneath her feet, she ran until her toe caught an unseen edge that sent her flying forward. Slapping her hands solidly against a tree trunk, Sarah managed to catch herself and stay upright, but the shock of it jerked her into awareness of the gloom around her. The light was nearly gone, and she guessed that the main trail was still half a mile away at least. Haste would do her no good if it made her break a leg, but the idea of being alone in the forest at night was awfully creepy. She made herself continue at a cautious walk, but it wasn't long before her footsteps came faster and faster, and soon she was almost running again.  
  
As the light sank to nearly complete darkness, each minute became more harrowing than the last until Sarah found herself groping blindly through the trees, praying that her feet stayed on the trail Countless awful, stumbling steps later, her sight actually seemed to be improving. She could see a silvery sheen on the leaves and weird, twisted shadows cast across the ground, and she assumed that her night vision had finally kicked in until a rare opening in the leaves showed her the night sky. Only a few starts could be seen against the indigo blue and she realized that the moon had risen.  
  
At precisely the same moment, the forest around her changed. Sarah hadn't consciously registered the fact that she could hear the trees buzzing with busy insects until, one by one, their sounds dropped away. She could still make out the faintest hum of nocturnal activity far off in the distance, but a circle of silence had descended on the wood with Sarah at its center. The fine hairs at the base of her neck prickled as they stood on end and her skin broke out in goosebumps. The forest waited, holding its breath, and though she stretched her senses to their limits, she heard no other noise.  
  
Taking a careful step, she held still, then took another. The soft squelch of her boots on the path seemed abnormally loud in the unnatural quiet. In front of her, a small animal suddenly darted into a burrow at the base of a tree, and all at once her instincts flared wide awake. She was being hunted. Something out there, in the dark, was coming to find her.  
  
Adrenaline flooded her system and she burst into a sprint, no longer caring about the trail, simply flying headlong down the path of least resistance. Branches whipped her face and arms but she didn't slow down, didn't break stride. The trees became huge monoliths, blurring together as she ran for her life, and suddenly she saw the glint of moonlight reflecting off a shiny surface. Hurling herself in that direction, Sarah burst out of the forest, directly into the parking lot. The pregnant orb of the full moon hung heavy in the sky in front of her, a handbreadth above the horizon.  
  
A few lonely cars remained, her own among them, and she ripped the keys out of her pack as she flew to it. Practically wrenching the door from its hinges in her urgency, she cast a panicked glance back at the forest as she threw her pack into the front seat. Dark and serene, the trees presented an unbroken wall against the moonlight, and there, magnificently illuminated, sat the white owl. Sarah hesitated a fraction of a second, then ducked into her car, locked the doors, and got the hell out of there, tires squealing against the asphalt. Behind her, the owl spread his wings and followed, a silent ghost riding the chilly night wind.  
  
She was too shaken to do any real thinking until she pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. The sight of the house calmed the tide of her panic, and the ordinariness of the suburban scene made her reaction in the forest seem patently absurd. Of course forests went quiet sometimes, especially with a great noisy creature like herself barging around in them! Sarah closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, groaning aloud at her own paranoia. She hadn't even heard anything, not the slightest sound from her imagined stalker, not even when she'd taken off like a bat out of hell and had probably telegraphed her location for miles. If anything had wanted to find her, it certainly wouldn't have had to work at it. The plain truth of the matter was that she had gotten scared in the dark and had overreacted. Pulling down the rearview mirror to take a look at her stinging face, Sarah winced as she saw the scratches on her cheeks. A few drops of blood had welled up and crusted over, and she felt like kicking herself for her own ridiculousness.  
  
Glaring at her reflection, she snarled, "You are a silly girl. There was nothing in the forest, there are no monsters in the woods, nothing is hunting you." Unbuckling her seatbelt, Sarah began to search her brain for an inventive excuse to give to Karen regarding her scratched face and hands. Knowing her stepmother, Sarah would end up going home wrapped in ace bandages, the mummy of the freeway.  
  
* * * * *  
  
The melancholy of their good-byes stayed with her for most of the drive back to Virginia, and solitude is never good for depressed spirits. Sarah began to shed some of her emotional heaviness as she rounded the last corner into her little neighborhood, anticipating a quiet evening curled up with a good book, or maybe a late movie. There seemed to be an unusual amount of traffic on her street. Brain numbed by the long drive, Sarah obediently sat in line for several minutes until she realized that none of the cars were actually going anywhere. A disproportionate number of them seemed to be black and white police vehicles. As curious as any neighbor, Sarah edged her car around the nearest and slowly approached her house.  
  
The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach suddenly became a gaping maw as she saw the lights flashing in front of her driveway and the yellow line of tape stretched across her walk. She got out of her car and joined the bystanders, looking at the smashed windows and the door hanging crazily from its hinges but not really processing what she was seeing. A small knot of policemen came out of the destroyed entrance, clustered around a man on a cell phone, and Sarah seized on his familiar features.  
  
"Bill!" she called, ducking under the yellow tape and running to the little group. "What happened?"  
  
All heads immediately turned in her direction, and Bill dropped the phone and lifted her off the ground in a huge bear hug. "Thank god, thank god," he murmured over and over into her hair. "Thank god you weren't here."  
  
She didn't feel anything. No anger, no sadness, not even the pressure of Bill's arms around her. Sarah let him hold her, staring dry-eyed at her home as he rocked her back and forth. "What happened?" she repeated.  
  
Officer Harlow, whom she knew from his fire and home safety talks to her class, put a hand on her elbow and said, "Ms. Williams, someone broke into your house last night."  
  
Sarah almost choked in order to suppress the high, hysterical laughter that suddenly threatened to spill out of her. The forced entry was, even to her eyes, a trifle obvious. "What did they take?" she asked, her struggle with her diaphragm making her breathless.  
  
Regarding her with concern, Officer Harlow said, "It's a little hard to tell, but they don't seem to have stolen anything. TV, VCR, computer, it's all still in place. Ms. Williams, do you know of anyone who might want to harm you?"  
  
"Harm me?" Sarah parroted. Her thoughts kept leaping from one thing to the next - her mother's jewelry upstairs, her passport in the desk drawer, her social security card - and she couldn't remember if someone might want to hurt her. She was a teacher in a public school and author of one children's book, and that was all. "I don't think so," she ventured dubiously.  
  
One of the other policemen retrieved the abandoned cell phone, listened into it for a moment, then handed it to Sarah. "Your parents," he said by way of explanation.  
  
"We've been trying to get in touch with you all day," Bill said into the top of her head.  
  
"I left early," she said, lifting the phone automatically to her ear. "Hello? Hi, Dad. I'm fine, I just got here." As she listened to the concerned voices on the other end of the line without really hearing any words, the law enforcement team steered her into the house. Sarah could hardly believe her eyes. It looked like an express train had run right through her home from front to back, with a slight detour up the stairs. The banister was smashed, the kitchen table reduced to matchwood, and the bookshelf that used to stand in the center of the living room was pulverized beyond recognition.  
  
The squawking in her ear stopped on an expectant note, waited a moment, then started up again, higher pitched than before. "Can I call you back?" Sarah asked, handed the phone to Bill without hearing the reply, then calmly went upstairs to check on her mother's jewelry. As Officer Harlow said, nothing was missing. She pushed the rosewood drawers closed, noting idly that her fingers were trembling, and tried to think of what to do. It was really very odd - items located on the periphery of the rooms were untouched, while those that had been in the center looked like a herd of cattle had stampeded over them. She looked up as Bill eased himself around the doorframe to her bedroom, and suddenly burst into huge, uncontrollable sobs. He put his arms around her and held her as her whole body shook from head to foot, then gently steered her back downstairs, murmuring comfort in her ear.  
  
They sat on the stairs because all the sitting-down furniture had been more or less turned into scrap, and Bill held her on his lap as Sarah dissolved into a leaky puddle of shock hormones. She couldn't seem to stop the tears or the trembling, but all in all she felt pretty justified. It was so good just to be held. Policemen walked back and forth from room to room, and after about fifteen minutes Officer Harlow came up and said softly, "I know you're not feeling too good right now, but can you answer a few questions for us?"  
  
Sarah smeared her arm across her face and took a shaky breath. "Sure," she said. "Just don't take any photos, okay?"  
  
"No ma'am," Harlow said, smiling. "Ms. Williams, do you own a dog?"  
  
"Um, no," Sarah said, thinking of her dear Merlin who had lived to a ripe old age. "I don't really have time for a dog. I'd been thinking about getting a cat, but I haven't started looking yet." The words came tumbling out one after the other, but the policeman didn't seem to mind. She guessed he was used to how people react to shock.  
  
He made a note in his black book and said, "Do you know anyone who owns dogs? Big ones, like hunting dogs."  
  
His choice of words made her shiver. "No, I don't know anyone like that. Why do you ask?"  
  
"Your backyard is full of dog tracks," Harlow told her, "and your neighbor, Mrs. Ruhet, had quite an experience last night. She says she was woken up around three or four in the morning by a ruckus and went outside to see what it was. According to her description," here he began to read from an earlier page in his book, "an 'almighty huge fellow with a funny hat' came out of your front door and set his dogs on her. She ran into her potting shed, locked the door, and didn't come out until well after sunrise. The moon was full last night so she got a pretty good look at the dogs, though the man unfortunately stayed in the shadows, and they're a distinctive group. White bodies and heads with dark-colored ears. Ring any bells?"  
  
Something about the description was vaguely familiar, but Sarah couldn't put a finger on it. She shook her head mutely.  
  
Officer Harlow patted her knee and said, "Don't you worry. We'll catch him soon enough. In the meantime, do you have a place you can stay?"  
  
Sarah hadn't given any thought at all to where she might sleep that night. The break-in was still overwhelming, and she just looked at the policeman helplessly. Bill came to her rescue once again with the soft, almost timid offer of his guest bedroom. "You'd have to come get your mail anyway," he said shyly. "Your mailbox was looking overburdened. I didn't think you'd mind."  
  
"Darn. I forgot to arrange it with the post office before I left." Sarah looked at her knees, then leaned into him. "If it's not too much bother. . ."  
  
"Not at all," Bill said firmly. Harlow noticed Mr. Cribbins' barely- suppressed enthusiasm and felt a slight twinge of nostalgia for his own early days of courtship. He escorted them to their cars, then prepared to wrap up the crime scene. Maybe he could find some flowers to bring home to Laura tonight.  
  
As Sarah sat on Bill's couch and listened to him fetch extra towels from the linen closet, it seemed to her that everything had happened much too fast to keep up with it all. Barely an hour had passed since she pulled into her street, and now here she was, homeless for who knows how long, and staying with the one person who was most likely to be hurt by it. His offer of hospitality came with no strings attached, but Bill was the kind of person who would view her sleeping under his roof as a sort of intimacy.  
  
The object of her worries returned bearing towels and a stack of envelopes. "Most of it's junk," he said, setting it down in front of her. "Certainly nothing that can't wait until tomorrow. Can I get you some tea or juice or something?"  
  
"Some hot chocolate would be lovely, if you have it," Sarah said. Chocolate helped everything.  
  
"Can do," Bill grinned, and vanished into the kitchen.  
  
Sarah surveyed the stack of mail in front of her and reached for it with a sigh. A cursory sorting showed that most of it was, indeed, junk. She piled the bills to one side and curiously picked up the envelope that was left. It was made of padded brown paper into which her address had been heavily inked, and was easily two inches thick. There was no return information and the paper hadn't held the postmark, but the stamps proclaimed it to be of foreign origin. Mystified, she tore it open and pulled out a single sheet of paper. It felt rich and creamy under her fingers and smelled like vanilla, and Sarah immediately felt a kinship with the author's obvious love of the written word. As she set down the package, a bulky object inside shifted and clunked against the table. A crude drawing that looked like a map took up one side, and Sarah turned the paper over and read the first sentence.  
  
The blood drained from her face and she put a trembling hand to her mouth. After a moment she recovered herself, gripped the paper in both hands, and raced through from beginning to end.  
  
"Dear Sarah Williams," it read in a large, firm hand, "You are being hunted. An old enemy has woken the Horned One, who leads his pack to claim your life in the Wild Hunt. The years have taken the majority of my strength, but enough is left to give you some small aid, and I have bound him to his weakness. The Hunt will ride only on the three nights when the moon is at her full. At these times you must run, and keep running! A church with a good pastor will offer you refuge, as will the soil of an island where no man has set foot. When the wind blows from the west, know that he is close. Do not speak his name, for it will draw him to you. Come to me in Indrahan when you have found Lugh of the Heavy Hand, who freed our enemy, and his companion Belenus, whose laughter once brought light to the land. To guide you on your path, I give you Ghorrom. Cast him properly and there is nothing that he cannot find. Have courage, dear child, and come quickly, for the last days of her binding are at hand."  
  
There was no signature at the bottom, just an intricate mark like some kind of knotty bush. Slowly, Sarah reached out and shook the package until the object hidden inside fell with a clunk onto Bill's coffee table. It was a knife, barely longer than her hand from wrist to fingertip, with a thin silver crosspiece and a slim blunt blade. It looked entirely out of place in the comfortable living room. Almost of their own accord, her fingers closed around the hilt and lifted it in front of her face. A series of orderly scratches marred the surface of the blade just underneath the crosspiece, shapes that stirred old memories. "Ghorrom," Sarah whispered, touching a fingernail to the runes. Was it her imagination, or did the metal become warmer against her palm?  
  
The clink of cups in saucers alerted her a moment before Bill came back into the room. Quickly, she stuffed the letter and the knife into her pocket, even managing to produce a lopsided sort of smile as he set the hot chocolate in front of her.  
  
"It's been a rough day," he said sympathetically. "You look really terrible, you know that?"  
  
Startled into laughter, she put a hand to her cheek and said, "Being burgled really takes it out of a person." She sipped the chocolate and smiled at him over the rim of her cup. "This is really good. Thanks."  
  
"Anytime," he replied softly. His meaning rang clearly in his voice, and Sarah dropped her eyes. The moment of uncomfortable silence was broken by a loud crack as two shutters banged together. They both jumped, then laughed at themselves.  
  
"Shoot," Bill said, embarrassed, "I've been meaning to fix those for weeks. Wind's changed - it'll be a warm one, a westerly."  
  
Sarah swallowed the thick taste of chocolate and said, "Excuse me?"  
  
Leaning across the couch to latch the shutters closed, he replied, "Yeah, these ones always set up a racket when the wind's coming out of the west. Something about the angle of the house - "  
  
Sarah put down her cup and raced to the door, flinging it open into the warm night. Yellow from the streetlamps and silver from the moon's fullness pooled together on the road. Air whipped past her face, stinging with grit. The wind had indeed changed, blowing down from the hills, and Sarah heard the dull thud of hooves in the dirt and the lonely baying of hounds, close and coming closer. 


	5. Chapter 5

AN: This will be my last posting for a few months, but I won't be idle in the meantime! With any luck, Sarah and Jareth will have a fantastic adventure this summer and I'll be there to chronicle it. Thank you for taking the time to read my story, and an extra-special thank you to those who have reviewed it. I hope you all have a fabulous summer!  
  
* * * * *  
  
There wasn't a moment to lose. Sarah dove for her keys, snatched up her wallet, and put a hand on the knife in her pocket before turning to see Bill's astounded expression. She reached up and grabbed his ears, pulled his head down, and kissed him hard on the mouth, then looked him squarely in the eye and commanded, "Find a nice girl. Get married. Have ten babies." Then she was out the door into the wind, leaving him looking after her in wordless astonishment.  
  
As she threw herself into her car, the call of a hunting horn lifted clearly into the night. Sarah floored it. The mysterious letter had referred to "an old enemy," and she was pretty sure she knew who that was. If *his* hounds tracked her, it was entirely possible that they might be able to outrun an automobile, but she didn't plan on making it easy for them. She wracked her brain trying to remember if she had seen any dogs in the Goblin City (other than Ambrosias, who wasn't exactly the hunting type), but driving at unsafe speeds soon required too much of her attention to think about other things.  
  
The lateness of the hour helped her feel a little less guilty about the traffic laws she was blatantly violating, and once she got to the freeway she headed east, as directly away from whatever followed her as possible. After nearly driving off the road a few times while her eyes were glued to the rearview mirror, she forced herself to stop looking behind her. The gray ghosts of trees sped past into the night as the broken paint on the road blurring into a solid white line. She heard wind and tires and no hint of hounds.  
  
Just as she was starting to calm down and think about formulating a plan, the car lurched and groaned before revving back up. A wild glance at the dashboard made her insides heave violently. Stupid gas gauge! The warning light had burned out years ago and her panic had distracted her from thinking of how far she had driven since her last refueling stop. She was running on fumes now. An exit sign loomed in front of her and Sarah made a snap decision.  
  
Any gas station not directly off of the freeway would surely be closed at this time of night, but that anonymous letter had suggested some alternatives. The town in which she found herself had clearly seen better days, but the sight of the spire looming blackly above the rooftops heartened her. The car died just as she swung onto a narrow side street, coasting to a stop in front of an old stone church, complete with bell- tower and stained glass. It looked like a promising place, worn and comfortable and maybe a trifle lopsided. With any luck, it had seen worse things than what followed at her heels.  
  
Her plan came to a standstill for a few moments when she discovered that the door was locked. Apparently the days of heroines running into churches screaming "Sanctuary!" had gone the way of the dodo. Sarah cursed, silently apologized to any powers-that-be that might take offence, and launched a sturdy kick at the door. Like the building, it was an ancient and weathered thing, not up to withstanding a direct attack. She pushed it closed behind her and looked around the vestibule.  
  
A faint smell like mildew hung in the air, so slight that it was almost pleasant. Moonlight streamed through the thick windows above the door, stained black and purple by the glass. The stone sucked up the heat of the night air that she had let in with her entrance, and within a short time Sarah was shivering. A wooden stand in front of the inner doors held a sign that read, "Reverend John Staples Presiding."  
  
"Well, Mr. Staples," Sarah said between chattering teeth, "I wonder if you're a good pastor. I guess we'll find out, won't we?"  
  
A long howl rose into the air, sounding as if it had come from right outside the door. They had found her car. "My god," she whispered as the hairs on her arms stood on end. She had been doing nearly eighty for more than an hour, and they had been right behind her. Backing up until she hit the doors of the sanctuary, Sarah muttered, "All right, Staples, let's see what you're made of."  
  
The lone cry was joined by a chorus of canine voices, which all fell silent at the click-clack of shod hooves against cement. Sarah shivered and waited. Vague doggy noises of snuffling and whining came from underneath the door, which creaked on its abused hinges in a way that made her distinctly nervous about the security of her position. A claw scratched against wood, then retreated. Nervous quiet descended over the church. Scarcely daring to breathe, Sarah held herself as still as possible as the minutes crawled by, second by agonizing second. The night was as still as a graveyard. Sarah began to relax.  
  
The doors in front of her exploded. She screamed and cowered against the sanctuary entrance, hiding her face in her arms as slivers of wood buried themselves in her flesh. Bits of the building rained down all around her, tiny missiles striking her arms and the back of her head. As the splinters clattered to the floor, she raised her eyes to see an apparition straight out of nightmare.  
  
Interestingly, her first thought was relief that it wasn't *him*. The creature in front of her was monstrously huge, easily filling the doorway with extra to spare. He seemed to swallow the light from the air around him, his amorphous shape a giant ink stain on the moon's white illumination. Twin red slits gleamed at her from high up in the darkness, and she realized that his eyes literally burned with vermilion fire. The sound of hot, heavy breathing pressed in all around her.  
  
Sarah spun and clawed at the inner doors. Iron grated against iron, but she couldn't get any leverage to force the lock. As she moved, something in her pocket shifted and clunked against the wood. The knife! Whirling, she whipped it out and held it in front of her defensively. The blade was laughably small and lamentably dull, little better than nothing at all, but the feel of it in her hand resurrected a scrap of her courage. The thing in front of her seemed to consider the weapon, and actually fell back a step. For a moment Sarah hoped that he might not come through the blasted doors, but as he bowed his great head, she realized that he had just needed more room to duck through. Hope flowed out of her like water into dry sand. She braced herself to fight. Like all good heroines, she would go down swinging.  
  
As the creature stooped to clear the lintel, a small white shape fell out of the sky and rammed into his black bulk like a missile. Screeching horribly, wings flapping madly, the owl tore at the red eyes with beak and talons, and the Horned One staggered back, one hand on his stomach as the other warded his face. The dogs went absolutely crazy, leaping onto their master in their eagerness to get at the bird. As his winged assailant delivered several sharp jabs to his face, the dark hunter bellowed in fury and drew out a long arrow. Roaring a challenge, Cernunnos drove the bolt deep into the body of the owl with one swift thrust.  
  
Sarah screamed as her protector fell beneath the blow. No sooner had the white body touched the stone steps, however, than a brilliant flash of light blinded her. Blinking away spots, she was astonished to see two figures silhouetted against the doorway - one dark as night and huge as an elephant, the other slim as a sapling and blazing with fire. The slender one flung out his hands as if casting the other away and a roaring wind howled through the church. The Horned One and his dogs vanished as if they had never been, leaving only the shattered entrance as evidence of their hunt. The nimbus surrounding her rescuer disappeared, and as he toppled over, Sarah had just enough presence of mind to dive underneath him to prevent his head from striking against the stones.  
  
Her vision was still dazzled by that momentary flash, but she could see the shaft of a wicked-looking arrow protruding from his shoulder and her exploring fingers found the slick trail of blood. Although his weight felt limp against her, the hiss of indrawn breath as she touched the wound alerted her that he was conscious. She swallowed thickly before saying, "It's got to come out. I'll find a phone and call a doctor."  
  
A silk-gloved hand arrested her, gripping her arm cruelly. "No doctors, Sarah."  
  
Although the silver voice was harsh with pain, she knew it at once. Her heart thudded dully in her chest as she turned her head to meet his eyes, blue and black against the pallor of his face. "You," she whispered, then shrieked, "I knew you were behind all this! Get away from me!" Struggling wildly, she managed to wriggle her legs out from underneath him and scuttled back into the shadows of the vestibule like a trapped animal. As his body shifted, he cried out involuntarily, and Sarah found herself instantly back at his side.  
  
"You're hurt!" she exclaimed. The thick arrow moved shallowly back and forth with every breath he took, and he moaned at each exhalation. He had come to her rescue and probably saved her life, and Sarah grudgingly acknowledged that her first response had probably been an irrational, knee- jerk reflex. She knew he was cruel, but that didn't necessarily mean that he was the driving force behind every bad thing that happened in her life. By way of apology, she knelt next to his shoulder and asked tentatively, "What should I do?"  
  
She caught a glimmer of light as his eyes flicked to her face and then down to her hands. "It felt as if the bolt went completely through," Jareth said. "Look and tell me if that's the case." His tone was lofty, practically snide, and if not for his pained breaths and the arrow sticking out of him, he might have been ordering her to scrub the kitchen pots.  
  
Irritated, Sarah rolled him onto his side a little more roughly than she had intended and winced at his muted exclamation. "Sorry," she muttered. Fortunately, she didn't have to touch him to see that he had been right - the arrowhead emerged a good three inches from his shoulder. "Uh, it's coming out the other side," she reported, feeling slightly queasy.  
  
"Very well," Jareth said. "Take the shaft in both hands and break it off as near to the wound as possible."  
  
"Are you kidding?" Sarah demanded. "Do you have any idea how much that will hurt?"  
  
He was silent for a moment, then said calmly, "If you're not up for the job, I'll do it myself."  
  
She had forgotten exactly how supercilious he could be just by breathing. "Go right ahead," she retorted, folding her arms in front of her in her best serves-you-right pose. He reached up with his other hand, grabbed the arrow, and promptly turned several shades paler. Mouth set in a grim line, he tightened his grip on the wood and Sarah realized that he was really going to do it.  
  
"Don't be stupid!" she said sharply, putting her hand gingerly his wrist, and suddenly she was struck by inspiration. In her most caustic tone, she continued, "You can't do it yourself, you'll only pass out. Men are all the same, they need to be macho all the time -"  
  
"I don't see you being much help," he snarled.  
  
"Why should I help you?" she yelled, tightening her grip. "You stole my brother, you arrogant bastard!" She brought her other hand to join the first and issued a silent prayer. "When I think of all the nightmares I've had - and you *watched* them, didn't you? Just like the story - You were so cruel and I was just a defenseless little girl - "  
  
The results were no less spectacular than she had hoped. "You wished him away, you selfish bitch!" he roared. A flood of angry words poured out of him in a harsh language she didn't understand, his rage lashing against her with dizzying vehemence, and belatedly she worried that she might have made a mistake. Too late to change the plan now. As his rage peaked, he slipped back into English, snarling, "You're still as childish as ever, thoughtless stupid creature - argh!" With all her strength, Sarah gripped the shaft and twisted until it broke in two with a vicious crack and withdrew the jagged end from his shoulder in one smooth motion.  
  
"There," she said shakily, tossing the two pieces to the ground. "Hold still, you're bleeding." She started to unbutton her shirt.  
  
Jareth looked from the fragments of the arrow to her face, then down to her busy fingers. A horde of emotions chased themselves across his face, and he settled on the obvious. "What are you doing?" he asked hoarsely.  
  
"It's to stop the blood," Sarah said, glad that the dark hid her blush. Undressing in the entryway of a church in front of a depraved monarch definitely qualified as sacrilege.  
  
"Quaint," Jareth grunted, reaching out a hand to stop her before she undid the last button. "Do you mind if we try something useful first?"  
  
"Excuse me for not wanting you to bleed to death," she said sarcastically. "Although on second thought, future generations would probably thank me if you did."  
  
Jareth's fingers twisted in the air, then handed her a crystal sphere as thin as a soap bubble that gleamed coldly in the moonlight. "You are a truly unpleasant woman," he said. "Break this over the wound."  
  
She almost had to sit on her hands to suppress the urge to drive her thumbs into his shoulder. She vengefully crushed his soap bubble, which vanished in a stream of silver powder that rained onto his injury like fine sawdust, forming a silver scab on each side of the puncture. "How fast will this work?" she asked.  
  
In answer, Jareth flexed his arm and swung his shoulder in a gentle arc, then bit back a curse. "Not quite that fast, huh?" Sarah said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.  
  
"Fast enough," he rejoined, and sat up carefully. "We must get away from here. He was unprepared for that little trick, but I won't catch him so easily again."  
  
Questions tumbled over themselves in Sarah's mind. She pulled out the one that seemed the most relevant and forced the rest back. "How long do we have?" she asked.  
  
Jareth tilted his head carefully, testing his range of motion. "An hour, perhaps a little longer," he replied. "I felt a binding on him, a strong one."  
  
"Um, yeah," Sarah said, suddenly realizing how unbelievable this conversation was. "Someone sent me a letter to warn me, and they said he could only hunt when the moon is full."  
  
"Well, then," Jareth sounded satisfied. "Moonset is six hours from now at most. If we survive until then, we have a whole month to deal with him."  
  
"My car's out of gas." Sarah heard the steadiness of her own voice and marveled at it, and wondered if she was in shock, and if she was in any state to drive.  
  
Jareth waved his hand negligently (on his uninjured side, she noticed) and said, "I can provide that." He started to get to his feet and blanched, unable to straighten all the way. Equally unwilling to sit back down, he balanced crookedly for a moment before Sarah let out an explosive sigh and gave him her shoulder to lean on. He hesitated only a fraction of a second before accepting the offer, his body stiff with soreness and pride. They made a very strange pair as they lurched to her car, each step jarring a sharp exhalation from Jareth as Sarah bent under the weight of his good side. Slim as he was, he was tall and surprisingly heavy.  
  
Once she had deposited him in the passenger seat, Jareth handed her another one of his crystals. She took it around to the back of the car and cracked it, and a slimy river of gasoline flowed from her hands into the tank. The stream stopped just as the tank threatened to overflow, and she scraped her hands through the scraggly grass to get rid of the pungent smell of fuel. Bent over in a most undignified position, she suddenly had an interesting thought, and as she ducked into the car she asked, "Why can't we just use magic to outrun those hounds? You know, disappear and reappear someplace else when they get too close. Like you did in the Labyrinth." She shivered as she said the word, and something seemed to ripple out from the car into the surrounding air.  
  
Jareth's face was turned away from her, his head resting against the car door, and his voice sounded slightly muffled as he said, "If I were you, I wouldn't say that name any more. It might draw unpleasant things. And this is not - that place, and is not my kingdom. I can't move about quite so freely here."  
  
An aching tiredness filled his voice. Sarah swallowed the sarcastic reply that had unconsciously formed on her lips and just said, "Then we'll do it the normal way," and started the car.  
  
Much later, while Jareth dozed with his long legs jammed underneath the dash, Sarah fought off her own weariness and tried to restore order to her spinning thoughts. She had a legion of questions and not a single good answer. The dark road offered no inspiration, only a hypnotic sameness that threatened to slip under her guard and lure her to sleep. She tried turning on the radio, rolling down the window, and at last resorted to pinching herself before a voice in her ear ordered her to pull over. She obeyed mechanically, not even able to rouse the energy to protest as Jareth pushed her into the passenger seat, where sleep claimed her at once.  
  
When she woke, they had stopped and the sun was shining brightly. Sarah felt its warmth kiss her cheeks and stretched luxuriously as she opened her eyes. She felt light, bubbly, overflowing with goodwill, better than she had felt in weeks. For the longest time she struggled to put a name to the sensation, then with a funny jolt realized that she felt safe. That was interesting, given the proximity of a certain Goblin King who had once been her mortal enemy, and who still routinely composed the worst parts of her nightmares. She turned her head to look at him and found that he wasn't in the car. Settling back into the seat, she wondered if she should be worried about his absence, but it was so nice to just sit and soak up the sunlight. Sarah stared at a puff of cloud low on the horizon and let her thoughts catch up with her.  
  
Despite her initial accusation the previous night, she didn't think that Jareth was the source of the weirdness that was currently happening to her. He was a tricky one, certainly, and she even believed him capable of submitting to the kind of injury he'd suffered last night in order to pull the wool over her eyes, but it didn't feel right. He had been cross and snobbish but he hadn't been duplicitous. Sarah refrained from closer examination of her certainty of that fact and decided just to accept it. Her gut rarely steered her wrong, and right now it was telling her not to look her gift horse (or Goblin King, whichever) in the mouth.  
  
The next question, of course, was why he was here at all. The more she mulled it over, the more Sarah realized that she really didn't know anything about the Goblin King or his kingdom. The few hours she had spent there had been pretty rigidly focused. Maybe that monstrosity who was hunting her was a rival monarch, or maybe the rest of Jareth's kingdom was full of creatures like that and this one happened to get loose. And what about the mysterious sender of letters, who was clearly trying to be helpful in an obtuse sort of way? Sarah pressed a hand to her forehead and groaned. Why was all this happening now? She had beaten the Labyrinth years ago, and she hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Underground since.  
  
With a mental click, certain facts aligned themselves and snapped into place, and her groan changed into a growl. That sneak! Maybe not hide nor hair, but certainly feathers! All the time it had been *him* hovering outside her window. The implications of that were so thorny that she didn't even want to begin to think about it, but by god he owed her some answers.  
  
Good mood effectively destroyed, she threw open the car door and tumbled out into fresh air and a clear morning. "Yikes," she muttered, bent almost nose to knees from her cramped sleep. A few minutes of stretching and rubbing slowly coaxed her extremities back into their usual shape until she was finally able to stand up and take a look around.  
  
Jareth had found a highway rest area, complete with gas station and a sad little grove of dropping trees. A blue sign on the gray building in front of her advertised restrooms as well as McDonald's, and her stomach rumbled loudly. A cheeseburger sounded absolutely divine.  
  
The Goblin King himself stood a few feet away on the spare little lawn between the parking lot and the gray building. Eyes closed, his face was turned to bask in the rays of the early sun. As Sarah approached, she thought she saw a glitter of moisture at the corner of his eye, and she froze in shock. Surely not. . . She must have been mistaken, because the gaze he turned on her a moment later was clear and cool. He offered no greeting.  
  
The moment had shaken her, and Sarah looked at him for a few moments while she decided how to attack him first. Inspiration failed her, so she sat down on the sidewalk with exaggerated casualness and asked, "Where are we?"  
  
"That's one of the reasons I stopped. I have no idea," Jareth said, his grin showing all his teeth. "That contraption on wheels - it's really quite ingenious. I found a button which caused your seat to fold nearly double."  
  
Hence her stiff muscles. Sarah closed her eyes and concentrated on not killing him. "Well, what did the last sign say?" she asked with exaggerated patience.  
  
He returned his attention to the sunlight, closing his eyes against the glare. "I had forgotten what this was like, feeling sun on your face at dawn. If you are inclined to be unpleasant, please go do so elsewhere."  
  
Sarah knew he was trying to irritate her (and it was working) but his words left her nonplussed. "But there was sunlight in the - I mean, in the Underground. I saw it," she said.  
  
"An imitation," he said softly. "It neither rises nor sets." Sarah blinked at him and revised her opinions yet again. An imitation? Was there anything about the Labyrinth that was actually real? The stab of pity she felt for the man in front of her, King of nothing but illusion and falsehood, took her completely by surprise. After a few moments, he added, "Baltimore."  
  
Sarah shook her head and tried to muster the anger that had buoyed her before, but it didn't come. Maybe she could get some answers out of him anyway. "I think the time has come to lift my veil of ignorance," she said. "What exactly is going on?" It wasn't nearly the cutting inquiry she had planned, but it came out forcefully enough.  
  
Jareth folded himself into an elegant pose on the grass, one gloved hand hanging over his knee in a gesture of perfect ease. His shoulder seemed to be completely recovered, his movements as free and easy as ever. "You mentioned a letter, I believe?" he said, holding out an imperious hand. "Let's have a look at it."  
  
Sarah drew it out of her pocket and held it up. "Answers first," she demanded. "You're my owl, aren't you? All these years it's been you sitting in trees outside my window. What are you doing here?"  
  
A shadow fell across his face and was banished so quickly that she wasn't sure she'd seen it. "It's a long story," he said.  
  
Sarah made a show of looking at her watch. "Well, I don't have anywhere else to be today, and we have a month until our favorite happy hunter makes his reappearance. My house has been destroyed, I'm holding a very strange piece of correspondence, and I've just spent the night fleeing from something that, according to conventional wisdom, is not supposed to exist. Sounds right up your alley, so I propose that we swap stories. You first." She put the letter in her pocked, crossed her fingers over her stomach, and looked at him expectantly.  
  
A smudge on the toe of his boot suddenly seemed to absorb all his attention, and after several long moments Sarah shifted impatiently. When he did speak, he addressed his voice to his boot tip, casting not so much as a glance in her direction. "Once, I lived in a greater kingdom than the Goblin City. . . " In dry, factual tones as if he were reciting some long- ago event unconnected to himself, he told her of the loosing of the Morrigan, the sealing of Scailtara, and the impending conclusion of the spell that held the Goblin City apart from the world. He had some minor difficulties talking around a few of the names, lest he draw the Morrigan's attention to himself, and omitted most of the details, but by the time he finished, Sarah's understanding of the universe had expanded enormously. "She begins to stir in earnest," he concluded. "My thousand and one years are nearly up." They sat for a while in silence, Jareth lost in memory and Sarah deep in thought.  
  
"A thousand years," she murmured eventually. "I can't even imagine that span of time. Well, now I know why I was told to find Lugh and Belenus. But why would the Phantom Queen go to all the trouble of setting me up as prey in the hunt?" She looked at Jareth out of the corner of her eye as she said this.  
  
His mouth twitched before he replied, "I cannot read her thoughts. Since you defeated her once, she might see you as a threat." He refused to speculate any further, but Sarah grew more and more convinced that he was hiding something. Direct pressure was probably the quickest way to get him to clam up, so she let it go for the moment.  
  
Removing the letter from her pocket, she smoothed out the creases and handed it to him. "Here's my half of the story. Unfortunately, it's not as useful as yours. I don't even know who wrote it. Some of it's been reliable and some of it's been dead wrong, like the bit about finding refuge in a church or whatever."  
  
"Aha," he said, raising an eyebrow as he took it from her. "Is that what you were doing in there? I thought it was an odd time to express religious devotion."  
  
As he scanned the letter, Sarah muttered, "Makes perfect sense to me. What better time to get religion than right before impending death? I guess the pastor wasn't up to snuff or something, because my clever strategy clearly didn't work."  
  
"Now Sarah," he chided. "You can't blame the chaplain, he wasn't even there. When it says 'a church with a good pastor,' it means a church *with* a good pastor. Surely you don't expect the Old Powers to be limited just by a building, do you? After all, they are in large part the essence of earth and stone. Still taking things for granted, are we?" He gave her a self-satisfied smirk, and she groaned and dropped her head into her hands.  
  
"You mean I needed to drag the poor preacher out of bed and haul him in there with me?" she demanded. "What kind of a useless - hey, are you all right?" He had reached the end of the letter and stopped dead. Sarah moved to peer over his shoulder. "What is it?"  
  
Jareth tapped the paper underneath the strange bushy seal. "This was written," he said hollowly, "by Cailleach." He turned to face her, eyes narrowing. "And she gave you Ghorrom."  
  
Sarah looked uncomprehendingly into his face and said, "And this means what to me? Here, d'you want to see it?" She pulled the little knife out of her other pocket, presenting it under Jareth's nose. He yelped and scrambled back. Sarah snorted and remarked, "It's not particularly sharp. I don't think you need to be worried."  
  
Jareth wasn't reassured by this statement. In fact, the sight of the dagger in her hand seemed to unnerve him to an unusual degree. He cleared his throat before he said, "There is more here than I understand."  
  
"That makes two of us," Sarah sighed. "I guess the first question is whether this Cailleach is an ally or not."  
  
Jareth considered carefully before answering, "She likely has the world's best interests at heart, so I would say yes, she is probably an ally. Like all Old Ones, though, it's impossible to know exactly what she is thinking."  
  
"Hm," Sarah said. "She hasn't tried to kill me yet, and that's a mark in her favor. The next question is how we're going to track down Lugh and Belenus, if they're still alive."  
  
Jareth turned to face her and asked, "Do you know what you are committing yourself to do? This is not a foolish game for children. The stakes of this quest are much higher than the loss of a baby brother."  
  
His mismatched eyes bored into hers uncomfortably, but she didn't look away as she calmly replied, "That's exactly why I'll do it. No one else would believe you if you told them this story, and two heads are better than one. I beat her once and I can do it again."  
  
His look was frightening in its intensity. "But the Carrion-crow is not even a threat to your world."  
  
"But she is a threat to yours," Sarah whispered, aware of a tide of energy mounting between them, driven by his strange eyes. Standing in his stare felt a little bit like getting struck by lightening, burning her from the inside out as her skin tingled with electricity. Suddenly, as if a circuit tripped, he got to his feet and stalked away from her, leaving her panting a little. She actually felt colder once she was out of his gaze, and a shiver raced up her arms. Dropping her head to her knees, she muttered, "I don't understand that man at all."  
  
Just as suddenly as he had left, he was back again, looking as cool and composed as ever. "Shall we get started, then?" he asked archly.  
  
The reversal in his manner was truly staggering. Sarah gaped at him for a moment, and then rolled her eyes and said, "Sure, why not? Where do you suggest we start?"  
  
"Cailleach gave you Ghorrom," he pointed out, "and I presume that means you are meant to use him."  
  
Sarah blinked. "Uh, what exactly are you expecting it to do?"  
  
Waving the letter under her nose, he quoted loosely, "Cast properly and there's nothing he can't find. Ghorrom is famous, you know, and not just for his ability to seek things out."  
  
"My god," Sarah moaned. "Just when I think I've started to get a handle on all this, the tables turn again. All right, how do I cast him properly?"  
  
Jareth smiled and confessed, "I have no idea. But I would say that since he was given to you, and he hasn't cut off any fingers yet, you probably already know. Just do what you feel is right."  
  
Just do what she felt was right, huh? Easier said than done. Taking the letter back, Sarah scowled at the writing and on impulse flipped it over to look at the crude drawing on the other side. The scrawl looked sort of like a map, in the way that chicken-scratch looked sort of like writing. Although the lines were disordered and random, bearing no resemblance to any sort of geography she knew, it *felt* like it should be a map. Peering closer, Sarah noticed jagged arrowheads that should be mountains, squiggly lines that should be rivers, and vast emptiness that should be oceans.  
  
Rushing wind filled her ears and Sarah felt the sensation of falling. She was flying down into the map, and it was like peeling away layer upon layer of thousands of different globes. The paper wasn't just one map, it was all possible maps. Landscapes rushed by beneath her and she stretched out her arm, her fingertips brushed the surging parchment and sending a jolt up to her elbow. Ghorrom felt warm and wise against her other palm. Sarah brought him up to meet the map, commanding him, "Find Lugh, and then return to me." She cast him into the maelstrom and felt him catch on something before pressing back into her hand. "Find Belenus, and then return to me," she ordered, and cast him again. Again Ghorrom fell into the torrent and snagged against something. The little knife was eager to be after another target, but Sarah pulled him in. "We're done for now," she told him, and he squirmed in protest before becoming still and cold. Like a swimmer surfacing from a dive, she rose out of the spinning map and came back to herself gasping as Jareth gripped her shoulders.  
  
Seeing her awake and aware, the Goblin King released her abruptly and said shortly, "Good work."  
  
"A complement?" she said, still out of breath. "Heaven help us, the sky is falling."  
  
"I was speaking to Ghorrom," Jareth said bitingly.  
  
Sarah rolled her eyes and asked, "So where are we going?"  
  
"See for yourself," Jareth said coldly, waving a hand at the piece of paper she held. "I have only a passing acquaintance with your geography."  
  
The crude lines in front of her had resolved themselves into an ordered picture of incredible detail. There weren't any national borders that she could see, but there were the winding lines of rivers and the silhouette of mountains. Two little black stars, almost overlapping, marked the locations of Lugh and Belenus. They were just a stone's throw away from a bigger black dot that was labeled Muenchen. Sarah looked at it, thought for a minute, and gave a soft cheer. Jareth affected a lack of curiosity which didn't fool Sarah for one minute, and she said happily, "I was hoping we could drive there, but this is even better! I've always wanted to visit Germany. What better place to look for fairy tale creatures than the Black Forest?"  
  
Jareth gave her a dark look. The incongruity of his face against the bright sun, and the absurdity of having had such a conversation in a parking lot underneath a sign advertising rest rooms and McDonald's, bubbled up inside of her and spilled over into laughter. The future was uncertain, her life in a state of total flux, but at this particular moment in time all Sarah needed to see was the adventure that lay before her. 


End file.
